Sometimes Grace
by LMSharp
Summary: Garrus is betrayed. Ten men are dead on Omega. The gangs are already rebounding. Archangel is an unmitigated failure. After everything, there's no reason Garrus should be alive, but sometimes, people get what they don't deserve. "Just like old times," Garrus says, but it's not. It never will be again. An ME2 novelization. M for violence. Feat. Beth Shepard from The Disaster Zone.
1. Passover

**Passover: A Jewish festival celebrating the exit of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. Literally refers to the night God "passed over" and killed the firstborn of Egypt, both humans and animals, and left his chosen people alive, provided they had marked the doorposts of their dwellings with a sacrifice.**

* * *

I

Passover

No way out. _Then again_ , _why should there be_? None of the others got out. Not Butler. Not Weaver. Not Krul or Mierin or Erash. Not Luc, Vortash, Ripper, Melenis, or Sensat. He didn't need to look at them in their bags all around the apartment. Didn't matter that he could see them out of the corner of his eye; he saw them when his eyes were shut. No one got out. Except Sidonis, because he'd known. _How could I have missed it?_

Across the bridge, the mercs were moving again, getting ready for another push. A Suns gunman poked his head over one of the barricades they'd put in sometime yesterday. Garrus got the idiot's head in the scope, and his brains spattered over his friends who'd had the sense to stay down.

 **149.**

They were all so stupid, throwing the scum of the galaxy over that bridge at him. Wave after wave after wave of them. So far, every attempt had ended the same way. But the bastards had the time to waste. They had men. They had ammo. Meanwhile, Garrus had gone so far past the recommended stim dosage his body didn't even remember what that was. The lower doors were sealed. The mercs couldn't flank him, but he was sealed in, too. The bridge that was saving him was also his death sentence.

No way out.

 _This is it._

 _In this kind of situation in the vids, the hero usually shoots off some quip about having no regrets. Not me_. Garrus had so many regrets he could write a book. _And not a cute little novella, either._ There was nothing he could do about them. Nothing but make as many of the bastards pay as he could before they took him too. They would, sooner or later. _Probably sooner. I've just about cashed in all my 'later.'_ He had heat sinks for maybe three more hours, but the stim crash was almost certainly coming before then. He had more, but at this point he figured one more pill would kill him just as dead as the mercs outside the door. Boil his brain within his skull. His life expectancy had ticked down from hours to minutes.

That was fine. _You always knew you'd get yourself killed one day_. He'd never expected it would be like this, though. _Maybe you should have._

 _I'm sorry_.

The drilling fire of an assault rifle echoed out through the streets, and Garrus dodged behind a stone pillar. The bullets buried themselves in the already pockmarked column, sending up clouds of rock dust. His visor counted up the shots— _thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty_ —and when the guy dropped to his knee to switch out the heat sinks, he swung back out. The guy was slow.

 **150.**

Another perfect headshot, but Garrus got no satisfaction in another dropped target. _He was just the screen, providing cover for whatever the others are doing back there_. _Can only handle so many bullets at once_. For more than a day the targets had been getting progressively younger and stupider. A while ago he'd realized that Tarak and the others didn't even have the guts to send their own men anymore. Instead, they were throwing anyone with a gun at him, distractions while they worked out something big.

The next wave was coming soon. He could see them organizing on the other side of the bridge—no clear shots, but they were there. Something was different this time. Someone over there was making the cannon fodder stand up straight. _Not in the hungry, greedy way they do when Tarak or one of the others walks by, either. I wonder . . . could be real trouble._

Garrus brought his scope to his eye and searched for the cause of the disturbance.

 _Impossible . . ._

Garrus took a deep breath, and brought his hand up to his visor. He restarted it, because the readout he was getting on the mercs' newest player couldn't be right. There was no way. But as the system rebooted and her face came into focus once again at twenty times magnification—looking up where he sat—he didn't need the tech over the crosshairs between her eyes telling him the same thing it had a moment ago. It had been two years, but those features were still burned into his brain.

 **CDR SHEPARD, HUMAN, Affil. Alliance, Council SPECTREs**

 **-Construct targeting solution?**

 **-Search?**

Garrus dismissed the options with a flick of his eye, and slowly, he lowered his rifle. _Damn it, my hands are actually shaking. Not good for a sniper._

It couldn't be her. It couldn't be. Over a dozen witnesses from the _Normandy_ had seen Shepard spaced when the ship had been destroyed over Alchera. Joker. Dr. Chakwas. Kaidan. Shepard had been blasted away from the wreckage and fallen into Alchera's gravity, oxygen line severed. Burned up in the atmosphere. There hadn't even been anything left of her to recover for the memorial service.

 _Or so we thought._

But she couldn't have survived. If she hadn't died in the explosion, she'd suffocated. Died of exposure. Been torn apart by the heat and pressure of falling out of orbit. No one could survive all of that, not even Commander Shepard.

 _It's not a trick,_ Garrus reasoned. _Not after the last time we upgraded identity encryption. No way they knew seeing someone with her face would throw me off. Coincidence then._

 _Funny how a coincidence will bite you in the ass every time._

She couldn't be Shepard, and she wasn't a trick. Probability dictated, then, that some psycho had found one of Omega's many black market plastic surgeons that specialized in giving new faces to people that wanted to disappear. _When a regular old fake ID just isn't good enough to keep the demons off your scent. But since this one bought Shepard's face—probably not trying to disappear. That's a merc that wants to stand out. Got to love the egomaniacs._

 _It probably means something, that the woman leading the people who want to kill you looks like Shepard. Or maybe that's the drugs._

 _. . . Shut up._

Garrus had thought he was beyond hatred and anger, lost in a stim-dulled haze of exhaustion and regret, but this—this was the ultimate insult, for someone who stood opposed to everything Shepard was to wear her face—as what? An advertisement, a boast? Some sort of sick, twisted homage? Fury coiled in Garrus's belly, sending new energy like molten metal coursing out through his arteries, and it burned away the shock he'd felt upon seeing Shepard's face again.

 _She needs to die._

Over the bridge someone yelled, "Bravo Team! Go! Go! Go!"

Garrus raised his rifle.

On they came, one more time, and there she was, vaulting over the last barricade with the rest of the scum. Garrus tracked her. His finger hovered over the trigger, waiting for her to come into scope.

Then incendiary tech from her omni-tool enveloped the head of the kid directly in front of her.

 _What?!_

The merc kid's hair caught on fire. The skin melted off his face, and he staggered back screaming, arms flailing, until he fell off the edge of the bridge to Omega's depths below.

If Garrus had thought hell had broken loose before, it was nothing to what happened now. The merc attack dissolved into confusion and chaos as two people with Shepard's lookalike joined her in firing on Garrus's attackers. A black-haired woman in a jumpsuit that couldn't be comfortable lit up blue, and an emaciated addict howled as biotic fields tore him apart from the inside out. A weathered, scarred man, much older than the woman, in battered yellow armor, fired an M-8 Avenger into the crowd. His spray of bullets sent most of them running for nonexistent cover, but one man in patched-up armor, slightly older than the rest, or maybe more sober, pointed an accusatory finger at Shepard's lookalike.

"She's with Archangel!" he cried.

And Garrus watched the woman that looked like Shepard roll her eyes at this brilliant grasp of the obvious, and raise a wicked, streamlined Mantis to her shoulder, moving with a fluidity so familiar it ached. The crack of her rifle rang out. At such close range, the bullet blew out his shields at once. Garrus saw the blue burst. Then the merc's skull caved in, and the gray matter flew out of the back of his head to paint a bridge already covered in similar stains.

Another human, younger, snarled. He turned his pistol on Shepard, and before Garrus could think, he'd retargeted and shot the man dead.

It was a moment straight out of the old days. Hope, confusion, adrenaline all raced through Garrus, almost as effective as another pill. He looked for Shepard again, just in time to see her fade completely from view.

 _Spirits._

Combat cloaking tech. Garrus had heard about it, but he'd never seen it in action before. With tech like that, a soldier could cross a battlefield to set up an ambush or flank the enemy right in the middle of combat. It was a stealth fighter's best friend, a sniper's dream. It was also incredibly expensive. Top of the line, just out of Alliance research-dev, they said. He didn't even want to think about how many credits that one program cost. _But Shepard . . . the real Shepard . . . she would have_ loved _it._

While Garrus's other mysterious allies pressed the enemy on one side, the woman that looked like Shepard materialized behind them, now bearing a submachine gun instead of a rifle. Its high-pitched burr reverberated off the walls, shredding the shields of the remaining mercs, leaving them defenseless before the man's assault rifle and the woman's heavy pistol and biotic attacks.

 _Damn! I could swear—it is! That's a Kassa Locust!_

Full frontal surprise attack, followed by a flawless flanking maneuver and disabling tactics at range to leave the enemy completely defenseless, ready to be demolished by her allies. It was classic Shepard, if classic Shepard had had access to the kind of tech and guns available to only the best-funded private mercenary groups. Even the salarian STG and the Council Spectres didn't have access to the grade of weaponry she was using down there.

 _She even_ moves _like Shepard. The visor picked her up, so I'm fairly sure this is actually happening and not some hallucinogenic daydream—even if it is the kind of thing only you could dream up. Shepard, against all odds, back from the dead with weapons and tech straight out of an edition of_ Guns and Ammo, _to save your scaly ass from the grave you dug yourself._

 _. . ._

 _Then again, never have gone quite this far before._

Garrus's fingers fumbled with the controls on his gun. He fired off one concussive shot—but no, her shields fizzled out in one blue blink, and she fell on her hands and knees to the concrete. The black-haired woman was at her side in a moment, covering her as she rose to her feet. The two women exchanged a few brief words, and with one exasperated glare up at where he stood at the balcony, Shepard shook her head and pressed on over the bridge and into the base.

His shot had hit her. She'd fallen.

 _She's no hallucination. So here's the million-credit question: what is she? More importantly, what does she want? No way she's shot her way into this foxhole just for laughs. Though I am comedy gold: the turian vigilante._

Even if somehow, some way, the woman running around downstairs actually was Shepard, how could she possibly have known?

The gunfire stopped seconds later as she and her companions finally cleared the path to him. Behind him, Garrus heard the door to the upstairs slide open, but he was watching the room downstairs. A shadow behind a pillar had caught his eye. Shepard back wouldn't mean a thing if someone shot him seconds after she got to him.

"Archangel?"

Another pause. Another ache. There was no mistaking that dry, commanding contralto.

 _Not an imposter, then. That's Shepard's voice. I'd know it anywhere. Hold it, Garrus. Easy. She could still be a clone. A VI. An AI. You see some weird things on Omega._

He knew he shouldn't have been surprised she wasn't here for Garrus Vakarian. He wasn't. Still, there was no denying the sinking in his chest as the hope he hadn't even known he'd been harboring for the last thirty seconds withered and died. _Ah, hope. Another one of those never-know-what-you've-got-till-it's-gone things._

Garrus held up a finger. One, lone merc had escaped the slaughter downstairs. He cradled his assault rifle and peered from behind a support pillar. Garrus squeezed the trigger. Across the silence, he heard the wet sound of his bullet ripping through another throat. **152.** The space behind the barricade was empty now, the freelancers demolished. For the moment.

Garrus lowered his rifle and took off his helmet. For the first time in days he felt the sweet breeze of recycled air across his carapace, but the metallic smell of blood mingled with the sweet, rotting smell of decaying corpses assaulted his nose with new force. He sat his helmet down and turned slowly, feeling the exhaustion in every muscle. He sat on the balcony's edge, bracing his feet against a nearby table.

"Shepard. I thought you were dead."

Her eyes widened, and then she broke out beaming. She bounded forward, arms outstretched. "Garrus! What are you doing here?" she cried happily.

Garrus regarded her. _Woman looks at a man like that, and he could get the impression she likes having him around. Now you're a handsome devil, Garrus, but that's the biggest, happiest smile you've ever seen on a human woman, looking at you. Got to get to know one really well before she gets past the Relay 314 and evolutionary associations enough to see a friend, and you may have lived on the Citadel for years, but Shepard's the only human woman in the galaxy you knew_ that _well._

 _This is Shepard. Or she thinks she is, anyway, which for the moment, equates to the same Good Thing for you._

"Just keeping my skills sharp. A little target practice."

Her smile fell into a thoughtful frown. "You okay?"

Damn it, but she _looked_ like Shepard. Up close, he could see she was thinner, and with strange, half-healed scars across her cheeks and forehead that glowed vaguely orange. Cybernetic implants, he guessed, but the force of all the little differences was to make her look more like Shepard than ever, because if Shepard was somehow back after Alchera, of course she couldn't be back without scars.

"Been better," he answered, "But it's good to see a friendly face. Killing mercs is hard work. Especially on my own."

Shepard rolled her neck, audibly popping the joints. "I don't know," she drawled. "You got me good out on the bridge."

"Concussive rounds only. No harm done. Didn't want the mercs getting suspicious," Garrus lied.

Shepard folded her arms and looked at him, as if she knew exactly what had really been going through his head at the time. "Is that right?"

"If I'd wanted to do more than take your shields down, I'd've done it."

Shepard lifted her chin. An odd expression flitted over her face—her eyes dilated and one corner of her mouth twitched up. Just for a second, his visor registered a fluctuation in her heart rate and breathing.

 _Strange . . ._ "Besides, you were taking your sweet time. I needed to get you moving."

Shepard came to stand beside him at the balcony. She looked down over the bridge. "How'd you end up here on Omega?"

Garrus looked down. _Stupidity_. "I got fed up with all the bureaucratic crap on the Citadel. Figured I could do more good on my own. At least it's not hard to find criminals here. All I have to do is point my gun and shoot."

He could feel her eyes on the back of his neck, the mix of concern and disappointment just rolling off of her. And if she wasn't Shepard, she was a better fake than he could ever have imagined, because he could hear the lecture in the silence:

 _You're better than this, Garrus. What right do you have to play judge, jury, and executioner? Taking bad guys out of the galaxy isn't the same thing as putting something good back in. If all you leave behind you is a trail of bodies, you aren't working hard enough. It isn't worth it._

It was the voice he'd had in his head from day one. _If you kill a killer, are you righting a wrong or just doubling it? If everything I've done here has led to this, what was the point?_ He'd carried her ghost with him every step of the way, but the way she had of reflecting all his doubts and self-condemnation back at him packed a hell of a lot more punch in person. He'd forgotten.

"Since when do you call yourself Archangel?"

Garrus shifted. He didn't like the way she said it—he knew the kinds of arrogant bastards that hid their identities behind ideas and legends. He killed those kinds of arrogant bastards. "It's just a name the locals gave me. For all my good deeds," he explained, desperate to tell her it hadn't been his idea, that he hadn't chosen the name. _You adopted it, though,_ the snide voice in the back of his head reminded him. _Don't even pretend a little thrill didn't run through you every time you heard it. How is that any better?_ "I don't mind it, but please . . . it's just 'Garrus' to you."

"Just Garrus," Shepard repeated, deadpan. She shook her head. "You've pissed off every major merc organization in the Terminus Systems." He heard the faintest trace of admiration in her voice. For all her disapproval, Shepard was impressed, too.

Garrus gave her a small, weary smile. "It wasn't easy. I really had to work at it. I am amazed that they teamed up to fight me," he admitted. "They must really hate me."

Shepard grimaced, and turned her attention back toward the barricade. "Well, we got here, but I don't think getting out will be as easy."

Garrus stood up. "No, it won't. That bridge has saved my life . . . funneling all those witless idiots into scope. But it works both ways. They'll slaughter us if we try to get out that way."

For the first time, the woman with Shepard spoke up. "So we just sit here and wait for them to take us out?" she demanded in a voice with some sort of regional Earth accent. Garrus glanced at her, and the man, too. _Who are these guys? I'd bet every credit I have they're not Alliance. Granted, that's not saying much. Knew I should've picked a gig that paid better than vigilantism._

"It's not that bad," Garrus shrugged. "That bridge has held them off so far. And with the three of you . . ." Garrus examined his unlikely saviors. Shepard or an imitation so good it raised frightening questions about scientific capabilities today, and two humans equally well equipped, experienced fighters and a hell of a lot fresher than he was. "I suggest we hold this location, wait for a crack in their defenses, and take our chances. It's not a perfect plan. But it's a plan."

Shepard frowned, obviously tallying up in her head with him all the ways this was a _terrible_ plan. "How'd you let yourself get into this position?" she asked.

Garrus remembered crashing the car into the bridge, slipping through the blood all over it as he ran, the last grenades exploding as he approached— _it's okay, just breathe, I'll get medi-gel._ He closed his eyes. "My feelings got in the way of my better judgment. It's a long story. I'll make you a deal: you get me out of here alive, and I'll tell you the whole damn thing."

Five minutes ago, Garrus hadn't been planning on living through the next three hours. Now, though . . . If Shepard was back, if she needed him, he didn't have the luxury of dying just yet.

Shepard regarded him, but she didn't comment. Instead she only said, "If we fight as a team, we'll hold them off."

"You're right. Their numbers won't help them in here, anyway." If he'd only done one thing right these past two years, it was choosing this apartment as Archangel's base. The only possible way to take it was with the element of surprise, and the mercs had lost that long ago. "Let's see what they're up to." Garrus raised his rifle again and looked through the scope at the barricade. Things were stirring there again, and they weren't just freelancers this time, either. "Hmm . . . looks like they know their infiltration team failed." He handed Shepard his gun. "Take a look. Scouts. Eclipse, I think."

Shepard raised his gun to her shoulder and peered through the scope. "Yes," she answered. "Jaroth was set to command the next wave when the infiltration team failed. There are more than scouts out there." Her finger tightened on the trigger, and a LOKI mech's head exploded in a shower of sparks. "One less now, though. Nice gun." She handed it back over.

Garrus almost cracked a smile as he took it back. His gun was bigger than most humans could usually handle without discomfort or inaccuracy, but Shepard had taken in the mods he had on it in a second and fired without flinching, rolling with the recoil, and making a headshot to boot. _So much for showing off._ "I try. We better get ready," he said. "I'll stay up here. I can do a lot of damage from this vantage point. You . . ." Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You do what you do best. Just like old times, Shepard. Let's give these bastards everything we've got!"

Shepard tapped her head. "I'll patch you into our radio," she said. She turned to her colleagues. "Zaeed, you take point," she ordered the man. "Shake them up and draw their fire. Miranda? Bring down their defenses. I'll flank them and break the line. Let's go welcome our guests."

Garrus saw the glow of her omni-tool for just a second before she faded from sight, flat, white teeth bared in a predatory grin that reminded Garrus that despite their appearance and diet, humans were still top of the food chain back on Earth.

He took up his position again, but this time, things were different. This time, he wasn't just fighting until they killed him. This time, he'd kill every sorry son of a bitch that was stupid enough to take him on, with Shepard at his side.

When Eclipse finally came, they came like a flood, and they came in formation. They vaulted over the barricade together. Unfortunately, doing so required them to use both hands. The staccato retort of Shepard's man—Zaeed—started up at once, but it didn't do much more than begin to wear on the mercs' shields. Garrus's first shot did better—a salarian fell right back over the barricade and slid, leaving a green smear behind him, but in the time it took Garrus to change his thermal clip, two more had taken the salarian's place, and the first guys had drawn their weapons and were firing.

Shepard's people were already in cover, waiting for them. The flicker of three shields failing was Miranda, employing her tech. The men dissolved in a mist of red and green, cut to a pulp with Zaeed's rifle fire. Garrus sighted a LOKI mech beginning to fan out toward the entrance, only to see its optics flash red right before it exploded, killing a salarian and seriously injuring a human woman that weren't far enough away.

"Thanks, Shepard," he said, focusing instead on the woman reaching for her weapon and struggling to stand. **154.**

"You got it," she said over the radio, speaking quietly so as not to give away her position, but he saw her, clutching her Locust in both hands, around the corner from the main force. More of them were coming now, mechs and humans and salarians, mostly. They'd heard about the freelance infiltration team, and they were focusing most of their fire on Zaeed and Miranda, trying to wear down the fresh soldiers to break through to Archangel. They knew he was tired, but shifting their focus away from him was their mistake.

Miranda threw one of the outliers into the soldiers behind him with her biotics, and Garrus and Shepard both seized the opportunity. While the Eclipse soldiers were looking to dodge Miranda's living missile, Shepard's SMG fire joined Zaeed's assault rifle in cutting up the body of the attack. While the mercs knew Zaeed's position, Shepard's fire took them completely by surprise, and while they were looking around to find her, Garrus shot three.

"Scoped and dropped!" he cried.

But the mercs were still coming, and now they'd found Shepard. A cruel-faced man that had just vaulted the barricade signaled two of his buddies, and they started toward Shepard's location.

She was already retreating. She somersaulted away and came up running, her omni-tool glowing around her forearm. She vaulted over the sofa, and as she did, the fireball she'd manufactured with her 'tool generators ignited the stuffing, spilling out from many bullet holes. The shotgun-toting man in the lead behind Shepard cursed as the flames roared up right into his face, forcing him back. Then he screamed, caught up in one of Miranda's biotic fields.

"One less!"

Garrus had already taken out one of the other two guys after Shepard, and as Shepard made it back to Zaeed and cover, she turned and took out the other one. His eyes boiled to nothing in his skull as he fell to his knees, and Shepard was already disappearing again, set for another surprise attack.

Meanwhile, Zaeed was still assaulting the main body of the Eclipse force. He was laughing and yelling abuse at them, killing three and four at a time. _Shepard probably hates him,_ Garrus thought, _But I'll just bet Weaver and Erash would have loved this guy._ Garrus took out his next target with a particularly vicious shot, a messy bullet to the chin that sent his lower jaw spinning away from his throat and right into a LOKI's plate armor. Miranda's next shot took the LOKI down.

"Perfect!" she cried.

Garrus heard Shepard's disgusted snort over the radio, as she came into view on the other side of the base from where she'd been last and her next spray of bullets hit the line closing in on Zaeed. "Less crowing, more shooting!" To Garrus, she added, "To think I'd ever miss your god-awful dance pop!"

Garrus blinked, and took his next target in the shoulder instead of the head. _Now why would any programmer take the time to teach a fake_ that _? How would they even know?_

 _Later, Garrus. Focus._

He took the merc down with a second shot, and said to Shepard, "I can patch you in again if you like."

He pulled up his playlist. He hadn't even been listening to it before, though "Die for the Cause" was probably more appropriate than it had ever been, now he thought about it. Shepard scoffed. "Don't do me any favors."

The flood of Eclipse over the barricade had slowed to a stream. The bridge and the entryway to the base was a sticky mess of brown—the less dramatic result of mixing vivid green salarian blood with the humans' dark red. The black silhouettes against the inferno of the couch Shepard had ignited were decreasing as they gunned down the mercs already in the base.

That was when Jaroth himself vaulted over the barricade. Garrus fired a shot at him, but it glanced off his powerful shields. He sneered in hatred. He completely ignored Shepard and her colleagues, glaring up at the balcony where Garrus stood. He muttered something and brought up his omnitool, then shouted up, "All right. Let's see how you handle this, Archangel. Go!"

He dodged back into cover, as Garrus watched a mechanical arm swinging over the barricade, carrying the white, hulking form of an YMIR mech.

Garrus threw himself down behind the balcony. "Damn. They're sending out the heavy mechs," he warned.

To his surprise, Shepard laughed, a low, throaty, anticipatory sound that warmed his heart even as he knew it would probably freeze the blood of their enemies. "Good," she said. "Don't worry: I took care of it."

The claw released the YMIR mech. Its sensors came on. Its cannons flared. Then it turned, sighted the mercs in Eclipse yellow, and started firing, the racket of its artillery ricocheting off the walls.

Through his visor, Garrus saw Jaroth's red outline behind the crate he was using for cover. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened just before the crate shattered into splinters and he was evaporated into a fine green mist. A hard, bitter satisfaction clenched in Garrus's stomach.

"It's gonna run out of mercs," Zaeed warned. "We'll have a problem again when it does."

"On it," Shepard said. "Garrus, Miranda? Help me with its shields?"

Three omni-tools flashed. Garrus's visor registered the YMIR shields die, and then he saw Shepard step out from cover, raising a grenade launcher she was pointing at the mech. "Miranda, Zaeed, get down!" she yelled, as she fired.

Metal shrapnel burst out from the blooming orange center of the explosion as the YMIR mech went up, and then there was silence in the base again, apart from the crackle of the fire still consuming the sofa on the ground floor.

Garrus waited for eight seconds, watching the barricade, but no one else came over. "I think they've stopped," he said. "Come find me before they regroup."

Shepard and her colleagues climbed the stairs. The door whooshed as they entered again. "I hope you weren't too attached to that couch," Shepard said as she rejoined him by the balcony. "I figured it was mostly beyond redemption."

Garrus hummed. "I'm thinking it's about time for a change of address, anyway."

"That's what I like to hear," Shepard said.

"You're kicking ass, Shepard," Garrus told her. "They didn't even touch me. And we got Jaroth in the process. I've been hunting that little bastard for months." He looked down, past the flames, at the pool of gore and fractured bones that had been behind him coming to Omega in the first place.

Shepard folded her arms. "Why?"

"He's been shipping tainted eezo all over Citadel space," Garrus explained. "Half the goods I seized back at C-Sec came from his team here on Omega. I took out a big shipment a while back and killed his top lieutenant in the process. Not surprised he decided to work with the other mercs after that."

He glanced at Shepard. She was gazing back at him, decidedly unimpressed, and he realized she hadn't meant 'why Jaroth?' at all. He dropped his eyes, but Shepard let it go, at least for now.

"We've still got Blood Pack and Blue Suns left," she said. "Think we can make a break for it?"

Garrus considered it. In less than ten minutes, Shepard and her colleagues had helped him take out all the remaining merc freelancers and all of Eclipse participating in the attack, to say nothing of their leadership. The trouble was, he had no idea of the numbers they still had on the other side of the bridge. "Maybe. Let's see what they're up to." He brought his gun up and looked across the bridge, only to realize that while he and Shepard had been fighting Eclipse, the others had been very busy. Krogan and vorcha were lining up, just in cover. _Time for Garm's attack, I see_. But something nagged at him.

"They've reinforced the other side . . . heavily," he reported. "But they're not coming over the bridge yet. What are they waiting for?"

Just then, the ground shook. Garrus's alarms started blaring all over the base, and he knew that they were in big trouble.

"What the hell was that?" Miranda demanded.

"Damn it," he and Shepard cursed at the same time. He glanced at her, then hastened to explain. "They've breached the lower level. Well, they had to use their brains eventually. You'd better get down there, Shepard. I'll keep the bridge clear."

Shepard looked him up and down, frowning. "Let's split up two and two—keep one of my team here," she suggested.

Garrus hesitated. Truth told, in his condition, he didn't like his chances of stopping a krogan and vorcha charge alone, but he knew from experience just how many men Garm had under his command. How many had he brought with him? _I hate when everything depends on calculating exactly how much I've pissed someone off._ "You sure? Who knows what you'll find down there."

Shepard sized up her two companions, and finally said, "Miranda, stay with Garrus. Keep him alive."

Garrus glanced over Shepard's compatriots, too. He knew why Shepard had made the choice she had. Of the two of them, Zaeed was the better killer. He looked like a seasoned merc—that was a Blue Suns tattoo on his neck, though he obviously wasn't with them anymore—but Shepard's Miranda was the higher-caliber operative, or he'd eat his boots. She was the one that could be trusted to complete any directive, say, like keeping a strung-out, exhausted turian from being trampled by a horde of angry krogan. Trouble was, that left Shepard with the killer merc who was used to only looking after his own hide.

The alarms kept shrilling, and Garrus reflected if they stood up here debating tactics much longer, Garm's forces would crush them from all sides and there wouldn't be any debate left to have. "Thanks, Shepard. You better get going."

"How do I get to the basement?" Shepard asked over the radio, already moving with Zaeed down the stairs.

"Keep going," Garrus instructed. "The basement door is on the west side of the main room, behind the stairs. I'll radio directions if you need help, but you've got to shut down those tunnels quick. Good luck."

Shepard chuckled softly. "I've got a belt full of heat sinks and a grenade launcher. What do I need luck for?"

Left alone with Garrus, Miranda didn't go downstairs this time. The Blood Pack was comprised mostly of krogan and vorcha. She was smart. She knew they'd need all the range they could get. Instead, she positioned herself behind a pillar at the top of the stairs. Anyone coming for Garrus would have to go through her first.

Garrus directed communications to her alone, so as not to distract Shepard downstairs. "So you're Miranda, are you?" he asked, using the time before the Blood Pack came over the bridge to fully restock his heat sinks. He eyed his assault rifle by the wall. He had a feeling he'd need it before the end.

Miranda responded, tense and irritated. "Miranda Lawson."

The first vorcha started vaulting over the bridge. Garrus's visor told him their shields were crap, but their armor was good, and they were armed with flamethrowers. He smiled, took aim at the gas tank on one poor bastard's back, and fired. Viscera spattered everywhere as the tank exploded. Better yet, the next guy's flamethrower tank ignited as well. The barricade splintered and shivered at the force of this second detonation, finally too battered to hold. At least five more vorcha went down in the blast. On the downside, the barricade had been stopping the Blood Pack from rushing the base all at once. Garrus reached down for his assault rifle.

His omni-tool buzzed, and he looked at his map to see a blinking dot that indicated Shepard had made it to the basement and was facing what had been their first tunnel out. "Get to that door and close the shutter before they can get through," he instructed her.

"On it," Shepard replied tersely. Below, Garrus heard the siren that indicated the blast doors were coming down again. One of the ululating alarms stopped.

"There's two more shutters," Garrus told Shepard. "Get them closed fast!"

Miranda's biotics were shredding the armor of one of the krogan charging. She fired off five shots with her heavy pistol that blew his crest right off his head. Orange blood sprayed, and his friends roared and howled with rage. Garrus focused his fire on the vorcha, on stemming the tide pouring through the breach in the barricade.

"A pleasure," Garrus told Miranda, getting back to their conversation.

"I would hope so," Miranda said through grit teeth, as another krogan went floating off the bridge in a nimbus of blue biotics. The energy she'd used in the last twenty minutes—Garrus wondered where she found the endurance. "Seeing as if we weren't here, these mercs would probably be plugging you full of holes right about now."

Garrus remembered Garm glaring at him, blood leaking from the scabs in his skull and mouth, pus from the ruins of the eye Garrus had taken from him for all of a day. He remembered the horde of slavering vorcha, shrieking and hollering as they chased him through Omega's filthy, darkened alleys. _Or worse._ "Yes, well, it turns out 'vigilante' isn't a career niche here on Omega after all," he said, forcing levity. "I'm Garrus—"

"—Vakarian, I know," Miranda interrupted. She threw another ball of biotic energy, then shot it on its way to a krogan soldier, igniting it—and him—in a howling mass of blue fire capable of both burning him to a crisp and ripping the particles that made him up apart.

Garrus popped in a new thermal sink and kept gunning down vorcha. Some of the newcomers were slipping in the pools of gore now. He focused his fire on them first. "You've heard of me?" he asked over the din.

"I made it a point to acquaint myself with all Shepard's old associates," Miranda responded. She fired at another krogan, but this one was shielded. Garrus flicked his forearm, and the krogan's shields went down in a burst of tech. Miranda shot out both his eyes and kept firing until he went down.

"Can't say I've had the same opportunity," Garrus said casually. "Who are you and the other guy? You're not Alliance."

"Zaeed's nothing," Miranda replied coolly. "Just a merc, a little better than these bastards." She grunted, and another krogan floated over the bridge to fall into the abyss. Between them, they'd killed dozens already, but despite that, and despite Miranda's bravado, Garrus noticed that the front line was getting progressively closer.

"Well, that's comforting," he said.

He heard the familiar chirp of the Locust start up, and knew Miranda had switched her weapon. She was worried, too, more concerned with the number of bullets she could fire at the enemy than the power of her shots. "If you're worried about Shepard, don't," she told him. "He'll do his job. We're paying him very well to keep her safe, among other things. Damn it, they're sending another wave!"

No, they weren't. There weren't many of them, but the new vorcha were coming up from the basement, not the bridge. He broadened the radio signal to reach Shepard again. "How's it coming sealing the shutters?"

Shepard's radio crackled, and in the background he heard snarling barks as well as the roars and shrieking of krogan and vorcha. _Varren_. "Coming," Shepard growled.

"There's not too many up here yet," he told her, "But don't feel like you can take your time."

"Got it." She meant it in both senses. The shutter siren went off again as she sealed another shutter. Only one more. Garrus let her go. It sounded like she had a real fight on her hands down there, and he and Miranda had more than enough to do upstairs.

"Who's 'we'?" he asked Miranda, gunning down the vorcha down by the wall. The bastards regenerated almost as fast as the krogan. Headshots were the only surefire way to kill them, but they were positioned so he had to lean out to shoot at them, exposing him to fire from the bridge. In less than two seconds, no less than three shots had hit his shields, and his HUD flashed a red **62%** at him. Garrus dropped back behind the wall. "Who do you work for?"

Miranda's submachine gun chattered away, but the Blood Pack kept coming. She threw another krogan into the mercs flooding over the bridge. She didn't fight like Monteague, Mierin, or Ripper, he'd noticed. No. Miranda Lawson used her biotics like Kaidan, supplementing with tech. Didn't pack quite as much punch as he had, but she seemed to have a hell of a lot more endurance. Her amp cooled off faster too. _L3. Probably refitted. She seems older than Kaidan. This isn't a woman that backs off from danger—that's a risky procedure._

"Shepard will brief you on everything after we get out of here," Miranda told him. "For now, let's just focus on that, _Archangel_. Damn," she cursed, as the first Blood Pack soldiers made it across the bridge, fanning out to find cover and fire at them from all sides. A krogan's shields went down to her tech. Garrus saw the opening and stood up to focus his fire on the man she'd picked. The krogan roared as bullets bit through his armor and tore his face to shreds. Garrus sent more bullets through his red, raging mouth, and the krogan went down at last.

That was when his blinking HUD registered. **5%.**

Miranda fired frantically at the vorcha shooting up at him, trying to draw their fire. "Garrus, keep your head down!" she yelled. "How many chemicals are you on right now? Damn it! I did not follow Shepard into this hellhole you made just to lose you now!" She activated her own radio, "Commander, I hope you're almost finished playing with the mercs. We could use you back here."

"I'm working on it, Miranda!" Shepard snapped.

Garrus crouched behind the wall, waiting for his shields to recharge. _Either it's really hot down there, or Shepard doesn't like Miranda much better than Zaeed. Takes a lot to get her to lose her cool. Though it could be both._

 **91%,** Garrus's HUD read. He stood back up, just in time to see the warlord himself charging through the breach with the horde. At the same time, the last siren went off, and the alarms in the base went silent as Shepard secured the last shutter. It didn't matter now, though. He and Miranda had lost the advantage of the bridge. The Blood Pack was all over the ground floor, and in less than a minute, they'd have both of them pinned down up here.

"Get back here, Shepard," he told her. "They're coming in through the doors."

"Already on my way," Shepard panted. "Over and out."

A surge of biotic energy burst out from Miranda. Two vorcha were suspended and shredded with her mass effect fields, but then she gasped, and Garrus knew she was done. "Fall back," he ordered her. "You'll kill yourself!"

"Shepard told me to keep you alive, and I'm damn well going to do it," Miranda growled. Her voice was hoarse and ragged.

"Not if you burn out your brain you're not. Fall back! There are levo energy bars in the footlockers up here. Get some calories in you."

He heard rather than saw Miranda following his instructions as the distinctive sound of her Locust got closer and closer as she neared, firing over the balcony as she went. Garrus provided her with cover fire. One more flamethrower-carrying vorcha became the instrument of his friends' demise. _This place looks worse than it did after the fight with the Shadows. Not that the property values here were that impressive to begin with._

Through the smoke from the vorcha's smoldering carcass, Garm, two more krogan, and three vorcha stepped into the base. Garm looked up with hateful yellow eyes and roared. "Rip them to shreds!" he howled.

Garrus brought up his rifle and fired. The vorcha right next to Garm went down, his face blown apart. Garm looked at the body, and grunted at the vorcha on his other side. "Watch my back."

Then another bullet ripped through that vorcha's skull from behind. It wasn't Miranda. Miranda was behind Garrus, inhaling Monteague's energy bars so fast that Garrus wondered if she'd choke, trying to get her energy reserves back up so she could use her biotics again.

It was Shepard. With Zaeed at her flank, she entered the main room again. Her face was flushed. She was sweating, but she looked like she was more or less in one piece. The problem was that Garm and his krogan were already charging up the stairs.

"There they go!" shouted Zaeed.

"Get ready for close combat!" Garrus yelled at Miranda. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod wearily, pale and wan. She brought up her SMG and took up position behind Monteague's bunk.

He heard gunfire downstairs as Zaeed opened up on the rest of the vorcha, but all Garrus could see were the three krogan closing in, Garm in the lead, blazing blue with biotics, his monster shotgun clutched in his fist.

"Hey, jackass!" Shepard's shout was a harsh, strangled gasp, completely winded. The fireball that burst from her tech generators and exploded over Garm's crest was far louder. It hardly made a dent in his barriers. That hadn't been the intention. Garrus could feel the heat sizzling from half the room away. Garm howled, momentarily blinded, and Shepard ran right past him and his friends and vaulted over the splintered, exploded remnants of the sofa upstairs, so she stood between them and Garrus.

She faced off with all three krogan, defiant. "Why don't you try me on for size?"

Garm's eyes narrowed, and his fists clenched. "You," he snarled.

Shepard raised her chin and raised her SMG. "Me," she taunted him. Garm's yellow eyes went red with the blood rage.

"Ahhh!" he screamed, and he and his friends charged right at her. Shepard opened fire, point blank.

Garrus and Miranda moved as one, and Garm's barriers stuttered and died in their combined tech attacks. Garrus blasted the krogan on the right as Shepard ducked under Garm's first swipe, never ceasing fire for a second. Miranda switched her Locust for her pistol and fired again and again at the krogan on the left. He staggered, tripped, and one last shot from Garrus put him down. His gun clicked and hissed. Out of clips, it steamed.

Garm had forgotten all about his gun in a blind frenzy. He hurtled at Shepard again, trying to pin her against the wall with that charge like a biotic freight train. _Not her! Not now!_ Garrus scrambled frantically for a new heat sink, and Shepard? She dodged the crushing blow and slammed her elbow up behind Garm's, sending reverberations up his arm that made him drop his shotgun. It clattered away, as Shepard thrust her armored knee into Garm's leg, hard enough to throw him off balance at the same time she dug her finger into his eye—the same eye Garrus had shot out once. Garm roared, and moved his arms in to crush her, but with one step up on his off-balance leg and another step up on the edge of the balcony, Shepard launched herself right over his hump, jackknifing as she flew to fire an unbroken stream of bullets into the base of his neck.

Garrus had once fired four shots into Garm's head, and he had lived, but where Garrus's heavy pistol had failed, Shepard's Locust succeeded. One, two, three, twelve shots buried themselves in the krogan's brain. He was already dead as his momentum carried him off the balcony. His corpse slammed into the floor below.

Garrus peered down to see the warlord's bullet-ridden corpse, blood leaking from over twenty holes in his body. His skull was smashed beyond recognition, and most of his limbs had splintered at nasty angles in the fall. Zaeed looked up at him from the ground floor.

"Nice," he remarked.

"Wasn't me," Garrus said. His awe colored his tone.

Zaeed snorted. "Didn't say that it was. I heard her up there. Guess he was pissed his freelancers sold him out for you. We're all clear down here. Headed your way."

Garrus nodded vaguely and turned to Shepard, who was picking herself up off the floor where she'd fallen. He stared at her. The past half hour he'd been struggling to accept the impossible. Now he was absolutely certain.

This was Shepard, the real Shepard, back from the dead.

 _You can duplicate someone's face, drill them in N7 techniques until they're perfect, train them in the tactics she'd use, research and construct a memory complex to replicate her history and synthesize a personality, but you can't synthesize_ that _—the essence of who she was in a crisis. She was an engineer, a sniper. Smarter than me—we killed dozens of krogan, and not once did I ever see her close with one. Never. With good reason—she's a quarter their size and a_ fraction _of their weight. She knew better. But she did this time, because_ I needed her to _. It's her._

Shepard raised her eyebrows at him and spread her arms. _What?_

Garrus shook himself. "Thanks," he managed at last, as Zaeed ambled over to join them at last. "They hardly got through to me. And we took out Garm and his Blood Pack. This day just gets better and better. He was one tough son of a bitch."

Shepard looked down over the balcony. "He mentioned you fought once," she commented.

"Yeah, we tangled once," Garrus confirmed. "Caught him alone. None of his gang to help him. I still couldn't take him out. I've never seen a krogan regen that fast. He's a freak of nature. He just kept at it until his vorcha showed up. It was close, but I had to let him go. Not this time."

Shepard shrugged. "Only the Blue Suns are left," she said. "If you're good to go, I say we take our chances and fight our way out." She glanced at Miranda.

Miranda was finishing another energy bar. She crumpled the paper and burned it to ashes in a biotic fist. "Ready for action, Commander."

"Good to hear," Garrus said. To Shepard he said, "Tarak's got the toughest group, but nothing we haven't faced before. I think you're right. Besides, he won't be expecting us to meet him head-on—"

All at once, the window behind them shattered, and a deafening drill of artillery bounced off the walls and reverberated through the base. All four of them dived for cover, and out the window, Garrus saw Tarak's gunship hovering in the streets.

"Get your head down!" Zaeed shouted.

"Damn it! I thought I took that thing out already!"

Shepard yelled across the din, "They fixed it, but not completely. I made sure of that."

There was more shattering glass. A group of Blue Suns mercs leaped through the back window. Rockets flew through the air, exploding against the opposite wall. The sheetrock cracked menacingly, and Garrus knew Tarak had been using all the time they'd been annihilating Eclipse and The Blood Pack to set up this attack. Shepard disappeared again, getting out of the gunship's sights, but it was flying away. Tarak probably had more men aboard, ready for an attack somewhere else. Zaeed took advantage of its retreat to start firing at the soldiers across the room. Miranda pushed one out the window.

A burst of fire signaled Shepard's reappearance. She had her sniper rifle to her shoulder again and fired off a headshot through a woman screaming abuse at her in the back before the man engulfed in flames had fully gone down. Garrus took out a man with a missile cannon himself, wondering just how friendly Shepard had gotten with the mercs before she'd found him. They seemed to want her dead almost as badly as they did him. _Of course, no one likes the fly in the ointment that spoils an entire master plan. Such as it was._

Tarak's men were better trained and equipped than all the rest. A lot of them were ex-military, from the Hegemony and the Hierarchy and the Alliance all three, and they maintained a quasi-military structure. Their organization made them the heaviest hitters in the Terminus, but now, their rage made them sloppy.

 _Anger. Like fear, it's a double-edged weapon. It can make you deadlier, but it while fear's a paralytic, anger makes you reckless. These guys are good. They should know better than to charge in like this, but because they're mad, we can just mow them down._

Miranda's SMG hummed. Zaeed's assault rifle cracked out its staccato beat, and Garrus and Shepard fell into the old pattern. She worked out, disrupting the center of the line, destroying their attacks and sending the ranks into chaos with bullets and fire. He worked in, making sure none of the enemy ever had backup, that there was never anywhere to run, watching the perimeter.

Garrus kept an eye on the open window, but after dropping off the troops, the gunship didn't resurface. Instead, the next attack came from the complete opposite direction.

"They're rappelling down the side wall! Ground floor!" Garrus warned.

"On it!" Shepard replied. "These are the last line of attack. We'll go and bust our way out of here! Cover our tails, and watch for that gunship! Be ready to move when I say the word!"

"You got it, Shepard!"

Shepard jerked her head, and Miranda and Zaeed moved into formation after her and started heading for the stairs. Garrus targeted the last merc in the room with him. He got the batarian's head in the crosshairs, and fired. The man went down in a spatter of gore, and Garrus turned to cover Shepard's six.

The Suns were charging across the ground floor, pistols blazing, faces contorted in grief and hatred. Garrus heard Shepard open fire at the top of the staircase, Zaeed shouting a challenge. There were maybe seven of them left. Seven men and women between them and freedom.

Miranda's biotics blazed, and the burning couch downstairs exploded in an inferno of splinters and stuffing. A turian was blown into a wall. Zaeed perforated the corpse before it hit the floor. Another two went down with Shepard's bullets in their brains. That was when one of their engineers hit her shields with a tech burst, and Garrus saw them go out in a flash of blue, saw the engineer grin with bloody teeth and aim her pistol. Garrus took the shot.

She had good shields. His bullet didn't do much more than take them out and knock her back on her ass. Garrus changed his heat sink and aimed again.

That was when the unmistakable cacophony of heavy artillery filled the air again, and Garrus went flying. Tarak's amplified fury pounded over the gunship's speakers as bullet after bullet after bullet hit Garrus dead on. "Archangel! You think you can screw with the Blue Suns! This ends now!"

 **53 . . . 47 . . . 32 . . . 16!**

Garrus hit the ground and rolled behind the decimated sofa, only barely clutching his rifle.

 **1%,** his HUD screamed at him in angry red characters. Worse was the impact from the bullets—slowed by his shields and armor. He wasn't wounded, but he was injured. Every bone rattled, every nerve buzzed. He'd jarred his leg falling down. The stims had finally burned out of his brain, and Garrus felt the exhaustion of over forty-eight hours of nonstop fighting crash down on him full force. His eyes burned. His muscles ached, and Tarak's bullets tore into the sofa. It would be a cloud of stuffing and fabric shreds in moments. He was pinned down.

 _If I time it just right—maybe I can hit it again. At any rate, can't stay here._

Garrus adjusted his grip, and peered around the corner of the vanishing sofa—and his head exploded with pain.

Someone screamed his name.

It was worse than the crash into the Citadel after passing through the Conduit. Worse than landing on the hull of Sensat's ship. Worse than anything Garrus could have ever imagined. He tasted blood in his mouth, but couldn't spit. Venomous blue and purple spots danced before his vision. Pain blocked out the world.

Everything was a blur, and his ears echoed with the ring from the blast. He felt his hardsuit working to dispense medi-gel.

 **WARNING! CRITICAL INJURY!**

The characters on his visor danced in his field of sight. They made no sense.

Somewhere, something exploded. Then it was silent.

Garrus blacked out.

"Garrus!"

When he came to, he realized it must have been only a moment. He gargled blood, trying to breathe. There was an insistent clicking—the systems of his hardsuit, trying to dispense medi-gel that had run out. He smelled burning— _right, that's me._

Someone was looking at him. It took a while for the faces to come into focus. Shepard, and her two partners. _I must look almost as bad as I feel—never seen Shepard that worried._

"We're getting you out of here, Garrus. Just hold on. Radio Joker," she ordered Miranda, beside her. "Make sure they're ready for us!"

"He's not gonna make it," Zaeed observed.

The pain was fading. Somewhere, Garrus realized this was a Very Bad Thing. He was going into shock; if the rocket didn't kill him, that definitely would. It was hard to keep his focus. His eyes slid past Shepard to a body bag on the other side of the room. He tried to remember who was in it. Weaver? Mierin?

 _Looks like they got me after all. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

 _Spirits, who'll tell Sol? And Mom? If she's even . . ._

Shepard was yelling something at Zaeed. Her voice was breaking. With difficulty, Garrus focused on her face again, and he saw tears running down her face. Shepard—crying for him. She was sweaty, her hair escaping that complicated knot she kept it in that he'd never thought was quite Alliance regulation. Her face was going all red and blotchy, but he would swear she was still the best damn sight he'd ever seen.

 _They call me Archangel, but it's really her. It was always her, right down to the miracle resurrection. Shepard—don't—it's not your fault. Mine . . . always mine. It's not your fault you were too late . . . I was stupid. Too slow . . ._

She saw him looking, and he vaguely noticed a pressure on the side of his head increase—her hands, trying to stem the blood loss. "Garrus, don't—no, please. Stay with me, Garrus, damn it! Shit! Shit! Miranda, _where's the fucking shuttle_? Garrus, please—"

It was so wrong to see Shepard like this, so afraid, so panicked. Garrus tried to raise his hand. _Shepard, don't—_

The world went black.

* * *

 **A/N: Welcome! I'm glad you chose to check this out today. Leave a review if you have something to say. I reply to all my reviews, which are always very much appreciated but never required.**

 **Updates are on Saturdays unless life or a bad case of writer's block intervenes. Right now I have about half the game dialogue recorded the way I want it, but I'm only a few completed chapters ahead of my posting schedule.**

 **Shepard is an Earthborn Sole Survivor, an Infiltrator named Beth. She's mostly Paragon, but if you're familiar with the Renegade options on this particular mission, you already know that she has her moments of pragmatism. You might know her from The Disaster Zone, the series I'm writing about her thoughts and character development from childhood on. If you don't, you might want to check it out. You can find the stories on my profile. This story is concurrent with the fifth story in the series, "Resurrection," and will occasionally overlap, but as a novelization, there will be much, much more content here. And, of course, while Beth Shepard is obviously the deuteragonist and the catalyst for the story's events, the POV character here is Garrus. His relationship with Shepard (friendship, disagreements, and more-than-platonic bits) will be incredibly important in the story, but the aftermath of Archangel, his emerging leadership role, and the situation with his family (revealed in the Lair of the Shadow Broker files in canon) will all be just as important.**

 **Regarding the more-than-platonic bits of the Shepard relationship: This is rated M, but it's rated M for turian-war-nerd descriptions of violence and concentrated exposure to Jack's potty mouth. Look elsewhere for your graphic alien sex fix. Or proceed with confidence as a regular reader of mine: this is an LMSharp fic. Through the angst and ugliness, there's always a positive underlying theme in my work, and relationships in the end are always healing and affirming and never gratuitous, and when it comes down to it, I like to give the characters a little bit of privacy when they get it on.**

 **A note of acknowledgement to the greats that came before: I did take quite a bit of inspiration on Garrus's voice and how Archangel might have played out from The Naked Pen's incomparable** _ **Mass Effect: Interregnum**_ **. Like many people who have read that particular fic, which documents Garrus's time on Omega, I couldn't help but adopt most of the events into my personal headcanon. Naked Pen's Shepard is not my Shepard, and I think Garrus is a few years younger than he's written in** _ **Interregnum**_ **, and I've written him here as such. But if the style ever seems to blend, or the events Garrus remembers seem to tally with something you've read before, it's just because** _ **Interregnum**_ **had such a huge influence on me. Not trying to steal anything, and in fact I urge you all to go read the fic if you haven't already; I'm good, but I** _ **aspire**_ **to be that good someday.**

 **Anyway, enjoy,**

 **LMSharp**


	2. Raphael

**Raphael: The archangel most often traditionally associated with healing. He also is occasionally presented as a teacher. In John Milton's** _ **Paradise Lost**_ **, it is Raphael whom God sends to Adam and Eve in the Garden to warn them again of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and instruct them about the war in heaven.**

* * *

II

Raphael

Garrus woke, panicked. The sickly sweet, sleepy haze of drugs filled his brain. He couldn't remember how to move, and the whole right side of his head, neck, and the top of his right shoulder were numb. Heavy. Paralyzed. They felt stuffed with fabric or plastic.

The smell of blood was gone, replaced with infirmary antiseptic. The grit of Omega was gone, replaced with the sterile, artificial gravity that meant he was on a starship.

And someone was gripping his arm.

Somehow, Garrus managed to tilt his head to look and see the gloved human hand wrapped around his wrist. Slowly, laboriously, he turned his head to follow it up to the face it went with. The sheer difficulty of it was terrifying on its own.

Then he saw the woman holding his wrist, and Garrus relaxed as the memories of the last hour before he'd been injured came flooding back. Shepard. It was Shepard. Wherever he was, he was safe, and it was going to be all right.

She was sleeping in a chair next to his cot. She looked like she'd used to look, off duty on the _Normandy_ , out of armor with her hair down in the long plait she wore it in when she wasn't on assignment. But under her eyes, dark shadows like bruises told him she probably hadn't slept in a while, and he'd been right, before. Her uniform definitely wasn't Alliance. He looked for a logo or insignia on the black and white shirt, but there wasn't one that was clearly recognizable—just the stitched roman characters _SR-2_.

He knew he should be more concerned with how she was back, how she had found him, who her associates were, what they'd wanted from Archangel, but now he knew he wasn't in any immediate danger, all he really wanted was to go back to sleep.

His mind floated away, a soup of drugged contentment, anesthetized bliss.

His eyes fell away from Shepard's face and drifted back down to her fingers, wrapped around his arm. Even in her sleep, she held on tight, as if afraid he'd slip away.

 _I said 'just like old times,' but it's not, is it? I never saw her like this in the old days—wasn't sure she even liked me all that much until later on—she was never one to let her guard down, Shepard. Makes two of us. Of course, she hadn't been spaced then. I hadn't been almost taken out by a rocket._

 _Wonder how close it was? Probably better not to know._

 _Been a long road since Ilos, Shepard. I guess we're both pretty tough to kill. Just not as tough as we thought back then. We're neither of us invincible. I don't know what monsters led you to wade into hell to pull my ass out of the fire, Shepard—though I could probably take a pretty good guess. But my number was up. I was out of time, and you snatched me back._

 _. . . You're the commander. Now we know I'm no good at that. Who am I to argue with you? If you need me, if you want me, and if when the painkillers wear off I'm any good to you at all after what happened on Omega—I'm there._

Her breathing was gentle and rhythmic beside him. Her fingers around his wrist were warm, solid, alive, and _real_. It was unbelievable. After Archangel, after Sidonis, after his own stupidity and every demon on Omega had come together to take everything away from Garrus, for some mad, inconceivable reason, the universe had decided to give Shepard back.

In the last moments before the pain pills dragged him back down into sweet oblivion, Garrus kicked into gear all the brain cells he could muster and concentrated.

Slowly, haltingly, his arm rotated in Shepard's grasp, so when Garrus closed his fingers, he could hold her wrist, too.

He closed his eyes.

* * *

When Garrus woke up, Shepard was gone. So were the drugs. He could move. The downside of this was, of course, that his old friend excruciating pain seemed to be back. The entire right side of his head and neck, as well as the top of his shoulder, burned and ached and were generally calling him ten kinds of idiotic bastard.

 _Well. I'm not dead. That's something._

Garrus poked his tongue at the right side of his mandible, and hissed as his tongue ran over hide that seemed to be mostly raw, burned, and pitted.

Garrus sat up, groaning, feeling the pull of heavy bandaging over his injuries. "Careful. A centimeter or two to the left and that rocket would have taken your head off. You're lucky to be alive."

The voice of the human doctor was unexpectedly familiar, and Garrus turned his head, wincing, to look into the concerned green eyes of Karin Chakwas. "Doctor Chakwas," he said. "Are you a sight for sore eyes."

She brought her hand down to the levers under his cot, pushing it up into a sitting position. "There now," she said. "Sit back. You should take things slowly."

He did as she asked. She regarded him a moment, then pulled over the chair Shepard had vacated—which he supposed now was actually her chair. She sat. "It's good to see you. For a while there, I wasn't certain that I could pull you through."

"How bad was it?" Garrus asked. He started to bring his hand up to his face, but Doctor Chakwas shook her head, and he stopped.

"Bad enough," she admitted. "I wouldn't touch if I were you. I doubt you're fully recovered from the surgery, and certainly the flesh is still very tender. You don't walk away from a rocket to the face without a scratch. Your burns were severe, and you lost all hearing in your right ear."

Now Garrus couldn't help it. His hand went to the side of his head, but he only felt the bandage over it. He frowned, then decided _that_ had been a worse idea than touching his wounds.

 _Neutral expressions, Garrus. Neutral expressions. At least for now._

"I don't understand. I can hear you fine."

Karin nodded. "I was able to correct the damage with cybernetics," she explained. "Still, it was a complicated surgery. I'd like to monitor your recovery over the next several weeks—provided you stay with us, of course. All in all, things weren't nearly as bad as they could have been, Garrus. Shepard got you here in good time, and I was able to save all mental function and most of the surface flesh. I'm fairly confident you'll have full functionality." Her face fell then, and her eyes were sympathetic. "Unfortunately, until the tissue heals and I'm equally confident you're fully recovered from your surgery, I'm afraid I won't be able to do anything about the scarring."

Garrus took this in. His talon hovered over his right ear. It was hard to imagine that the natural ear was just gone. For the rest of his life, half of what he heard would be supplied by a synthetic implant.

 _But there one minute, gone the next, isn't that how it works? One second Garrus is a more-or-less-intact adult male turian, the next, he gets hit by a rocket and loses his ear and half his face. So much for handsome devil._

 _Stop it. You're feeling sorry for yourself. All of them died for Archangel and you what? Lose an ear Karin Chakwas replaces so you can't even tell the difference and a face she can't replace just_ yet _. Shut up. You got off so easy it's an insult to their memories._

Still he found himself swallowing, his stomach sinking a little. "It's fine, doctor. I—thank you. I'm glad you were here."

Karin's eyes were shining. She pressed her lips together, and was silent for several seconds. Then she gripped his good shoulder tightly for a moment, and released. "Don't do it again," she ordered him. "As fond as I am of you, Garrus, I'd rather not see you stretched out on my operating table."

"I'll do my best," Garrus told her. "I promise, it was unintentional."

Karin peered at him, and Garrus shifted. She gave a noncommittal hum, and Garrus was the first to drop his gaze. _That woman sees more than most psychiatrists._

Doctor Chakwas stood, and walked over to her desk. Garrus followed her progress. Before, he'd been too out of it, but now, even though the pain gnawed at the edges of his brain, it was impossible not to notice just how much the infirmary on this ship looked like the _Normandy_.

 _The tech's been updated. It's more extensive. The room's almost twice as large, but otherwise . . ._

Karin picked up a report and began typing. "Your surgery went well," she told him. "You're cleared for light duty immediately, though I'd like to have you in here for observation for the next couple nights. However, I'd rather you didn't go storming any armies with Shepard just yet, if you please. At least for the next week or so, until we're certain how your body is responding to the cybernetic implants." She hesitated. "I can give you medication for the pain, if you like. I remember you never—"

"No, you were right," Garrus confirmed, even as his body screamed at him to take the pills. "Only when it's absolutely necessary. I can handle it, doc. But thank you."

"Are you sure?" Doctor Chakwas asked.

He smiled at her, damning the pain. "Absolutely." Then he stood, groaning. "Where are we? It looks like the _Normandy_."

Karin looked around. "In a way it is. This is the _Normandy_ _SR-2_ , a frigate based on the specifications of the original _Normandy_."

Garrus hummed, and took a step, trying it out. It was fine. _Of course it's fine. It's not your legs that were hurt, you idiot._ "Except the original _Normandy_ was an Alliance ship, and this isn't," he said. It wasn't a question.

Doctor Chakwas looked up at him. "Commander Shepard is in charge of this mission," she insisted, oddly defensive. "I feel it's important that you know that, Garrus. I know Shepard didn't have the chance to brief you completely back on Omega—"

"—We got a little tied up, yes."

"—But the Council has refused to help, and our mission could potentially save many thousands of human lives—"

"Doctor," Garrus interrupted. Chakwas stopped talking. "Who are you working for? Why is it important that I know Shepard's in charge?"

She wrung her hands, but she told him. She told him everything. How Shepard _had_ died over Alchera, but Cerberus had recovered her body and spent billions of credits to bring her back. How they'd somehow rebuilt the _Normandy_ and given it to her for this mission—to stop the attacks on human colonies in the Terminus systems, attacks they'd traced to the Collectors. How Cerberus believed the Collectors were working for the Reapers, but so far they'd found no proof of anything except that the Collectors _were_ behind the attacks on the human colonies. How they were assembling a team to follow the Collectors to their homeworld beyond the Omega-4 relay—from which no one else had ever returned alive—save the colonists if they could, and stop the attacks.

Garrus had sat down again by the time she was done. "How many others with her from the old days—the mission to track down Saren?" he asked.

Karin shook her head. "Almost no one. It was all Anderson could do to get the Council to even acknowledge she's back and reinstate her Spectre status, and she's still basically been banished from Council space until such time as she terminates her relationship with Cerberus, but they refuse to help the humans disappearing, so what could she do? She's tried to reach out to the Alliance—with no response. Everyone on board is Cerberus, or hired by Cerberus. Everyone but Shepard, Jeff, and myself—and you, if you decide to stay."

"Joker's here, too?"

"Yes. After the first _Normandy_ crashed, the Alliance grounded him, like they tried to assign me to a colony outpost. It's one thing to be saviors of the Citadel, but I don't think they approved that we mutinied to do it. Cerberus reached out to us when they were sure the Lazarus Project was working. I had my reservations. To be honest, I still do, but—"she trailed off.

"I get it, doc," Garrus said, his head buzzing, and not just from the shooting pain.

Cerberus. They'd started as a black ops Alliance organization, but they'd quickly gone rogue. Now they were on the Council's list of terrorist concerns, with differing reports as to how far their prohuman agenda had gone toward a xenophobic one. That was bad enough, but Garrus had dealt with Cerberus before. He'd seen what they were capable of. They'd messed with rachni, thorian creepers, geth husks—and they'd used human colonists as their test subjects. And when the Alliance had dug too deeply into their operations, they'd had the rear admiral in charge of the investigation murdered, and lured his soldiers into the nest of a thresher maw.

It hadn't been the first time Cerberus had done experiments with thresher maws and Alliance soldiers. The first time had been eight years ago at the human colony of Akuze. Shepard had lost her entire unit. Fifty comrades. Fifty friends. Everyone had heard about it, and he knew Shepard still thought about that day. She'd said she still heard the screams of the people she lost.

She'd spared one of the murderers years ago so he could go to trial, and he knew it had been one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Now she was walking among them every day. If their intel was good, the Reapers were behind the Collector attacks on human colonies, and the Council was refusing to help—none of which would surprise him—then part of Shepard's willingness to work with Cerberus would be explained.

More of it would be explained by their having resurrected her, and by Doctor Chakwas's and Joker's presence on the ship.

Doctor Chakwas peered at him. "I imagine you have reservations as well."

 _That's an understatement if I've ever heard one._ "Ha. A few." _Cerberus rebuilt Shepard. She's her, but if she's her, they've got to know she's a liability. What else might they have done to her?_ "Don't worry, doctor," Garrus told her. "Shepard saved my life on Omega. We have to stop the Reapers, but even if they aren't involved in this, I want to help your colonists any way I can. I'm in." _And if it turns out Shepard doesn't want to be here, I'll see what I can do about that too._

Doctor Chakwas smiled in obvious relief. "I'm glad to hear it. It'll be good to work with you again, Garrus. I'm certain Shepard will think so. You were always her first call, you know, back on the original _Normandy_. She liked you—as far as she ever let herself like anyone." Doctor Chakwas's face fell. She looked earnestly at Garrus, as if she were willing him to understand something she wasn't quite saying. "I think you just about gave her a heart attack on Omega. With everything we're dealing with now, I think she could use a friend."

"Where is she?" Garrus asked. "With your permission, I'd like to go tell her I'm cleared for duty."

" _Light_ duty," Doctor Chakwas reminded him sternly. "I don't want you in action for at least another week, Garrus, and I expect you back here tonight and tomorrow night so I can continue to observe your recovery. Understand?"

"Understood. Thank you."

"Shepard should be near the CIC," she told him, picking up a report off her desk. "Perhaps in the briefing room. They're both on Deck Two. You shouldn't have any difficulties finding them. The ship's layout is almost identical to the original _Normandy_ , just on a larger scale. When you've spoken to her, you might consider looking over our battery," Doctor Chakwas suggested. "The ship's crew is almost complete, but I believe Miranda intended for one of Shepard's new recruits to serve as gunnery officer. The position isn't exactly in Zaeed or Kasumi's skill sets, but I imagine calibrating and firing gigantic guns is right up your alley."

Miranda and Zaeed he'd met on Omega. Garrus made a note to meet this _Kasumi_. "I've been known to do that kind of work," he admitted.

"Your armor is in the locker at the back of the room," Doctor Chakwas continued. "You'll want to replace it eventually—it's about as damaged as you are. Shepard might be able to help with that. I believe Cerberus is willing to compensate you for your assistance on this mission. You'll be able to purchase new armor as well as civilian clothes for when you're off duty, though I don't recall you ever wearing street clothes around the ship."

"I didn't," Garrus called. He'd found his armor where she'd said it would be, and was already strapping it to his bodysuit. The doctor wasn't kidding—like him, his breastplate had definitely come off the worse in the fight with the rocket. There was black carbon scoring all the way down to the shoulder, not to mention a gap as big as his palm in the neck. The rest of it wasn't that bad, though. His omni-tool verified that most of the tech in the suit was still functioning, though the medi-gel dispensers needed to be replenished. For sure it was better than walking around the decks in his underwear.

When Garrus had fastened his armor on again, his hand hovered over the Archangel symbol Sensat had painted on it months ago. Then he saw the last item in the footlocker. Under his sniper rifle and assault rifle, recovered from the base, was his visor. Remarkably, it was still intact. The rocket had hit the right side of his face. The left had been untouched— _and Sensat built it to last. He had to, after everything I put the others through._

Garrus picked it up carefully. On the rim, he read the inscription Sensat had set there, just hours before the attack that had ended his life—all of their lives.

 **ARCHANGELUS SUMUS—SIDONIS—ERASH—MELENIS—SENSAT—BUTLER—WEAVER—MONTEAGUE—RIPPER—GRUNDAN KRUL—MIERIN—VORTASH**

Garrus's hands shook. He brought up his omni-tool and set it to burn. Extending his forefinger, he burned away the inscription of the one other man who hadn't died on Omega. The one who had betrayed them all. He watched the letters disintegrate and didn't even care about Doctor Chakwas's curious gaze behind him.

 _One day it will be you, Lantar. I'll find you, and you'll feel every blow they took._

Garrus donned his visor and stood up straight. "See you later, Doctor Chakwas."

He left the med bay.

The crew stared at him as he crossed the deck. _Not sure if it's that I'm the only turian on the ship again or that I'm missing half my face. Probably both._ He grinned at the people staring, ignoring the agonizing pain that shot through what was left of his face as he did so. One or two of them visibly flinched. Garrus sighed internally. _Back to this song and dance again. Well. At least I haven't lost my edge. Hell, they're Cerberus. Between that and . . . everything else . . . odds are the big, bad turian's even scarier than he used to be._ Back on the _SR-1_ , it had taken some of the crew awhile to come around to the idea of working with a turian. Still caught up in the bad feeling of thirty years ago. They'd eventually gotten used to the fact that he wasn't their enemy.

Garrus catalogued reactions as he made his way toward where the stairs had been on the _SR-1_ , checking for micro-expressions that might indicate he'd have trouble later on, but strangely enough, he didn't see any. A crewwoman reviewing reports in the mess gave him a small, wary nod of acknowledgment. Another man actually came up and introduced himself. Garrus shook the man—Vadir Rolston's—proffered hand and accepted his welcome. He showed Garrus to the elevator and moved on, and Garrus entered, thinking hard. By the time he'd encountered the _very_ friendly, peppy redheaded woman on the crew deck who called herself Kelly and introduced herself as Shepard's yeoman, it had become clear that Cerberus or not, he wasn't starting over again from square one with these humans.

 _There was more overt hostility on the original_ Normandy _. For members of a xenophobic terrorist organization, this crew's downright friendly. They're scared, sure. Wary. But there's not the suspicion there was back then._

 _Guess there are a few advantages to saving the galaxy after all, even with Cerberus. Seems to have earned me a couple points at least._

Kelly pointed him toward the comm and briefing room. The doors swished open, virtually silent. It was unnerving. Doctor Chakwas hadn't been kidding. This ship was very like the original _Normandy_. Too much like it. It was a virtual duplicate, only better. Bigger, brighter, cleaner, more expensive. Everything on the ship whispered 'power' to anyone paying attention.

 _And the_ Normandy _was a top-secret Hierarchy-Alliance collaboration. A prototype. How did Cerberus get the blueprints? How'd they get the funds to replicate it?_

Maybe the crew wasn't as hostile as he might have expected, but Garrus was still unnerved by the time he finally walked into the briefing room and found Shepard in conversation with a human male—youngish, tall, and strong looking, with a bearing that said 'officer' to Garrus. Garrus considered the man. _Chakwas said there's not a gunnery officer, and everything I've heard suggests Miranda's XO. This guy's either navigation or in charge of the armory. But in that kind of physical condition—probably the armory. And I'll just bet he serves in the ground team too. If he doesn't, it's a waste._

Shepard was focused on the man, though she looked impatient—arms folded, one eyebrow cocked. The man had his back to Garrus.

Garrus stepped into the room. "Shepard."

The man turned, and Garrus got the distinct impression he had just been talking about him. "Tough son of a bitch," he remarked, sounding impressed. "Didn't think he'd be up yet."

Shepard took a half step forward. Her eyes were riveted on his face, and under her searching gaze, Garrus felt self-conscious in a way he hadn't under the eyes of Doctor Chakwas and half of the crew. Without his leave, his fingers wandered up to run over his scars. The bumps were strange and new under his touch, and the raw skin protested loudly. "Nobody would give me a mirror. How bad is it?"

He realized the opening he'd given her right as he said it, and sure enough, her eyes crinkled up and danced. "Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Slap some face paint on there, and no one will even notice."

Garrus couldn't help laughing out loud, but the laugh sent a new throb through his face and neck, and he groaned. "Oh, don't make me laugh, damn it. My face is barely holding together as it is. Some women find facial scars attractive," he mused. "Mind you, most of those women are krogan."

Shepard's joke was a promise: that nothing would change between them, that she wasn't going to pity him. His own was more of a confession of the very real identity crisis he'd been trying to quash since he'd woken up in the med bay. _Because wounded vanity and damaged dating prospects are really the worst things you have to worry about right now._ At any rate, the combined effect seemed to be to make Shepard's officer finally realize he wasn't wanted or needed in the room. He saluted Shepard and left, presumably to return to his duties, and Garrus stepped closer to Shepard. "Frankly, I'm more worried about you," he said at once. "Cerberus, Shepard? You remember those sick experiments they were doing?"

Shepard smiled with less humor and more teeth than he'd ever seen. "Checking to see if I'm me?" she asked drily. "I know what they are, Garrus. I'm hardly likely to forget, seeing as now I'm one of their sick experiments."

She was different. He hadn't taken the time to fully take inventory before. _Well, I was a little preoccupied._ But it wasn't just the physical changes that came along, presumably, with being brought back from the dead. It wasn't just the Cerberus uniform, or even the fact that she seemed happier to see him than he would have ever dreamed she'd be when he'd first started on the _SR-1_. That all played into it, but there was more. Shepard was harder than she'd been back then. Angrier. And she was scared. Commander Shepard was afraid.

Garrus opened his mouth to apologize, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand and looked him dead in the eye. "That's why I'm glad you're here. I don't trust them, and right now I don't trust me either. But I trust you. If I'm walking into hell, I want you at my side."

The short, simple declaration hit him right in the gut, so, naturally, Garrus responded with humor. "You realize this plan has me walking into hell, too? Hah. Just like old times." She smirked, but the shadow stayed behind her eyes. "I'm fit for duty whenever you need me, Shepard."

He neglected to mention Chakwas had qualified light duty for the next week. The doctor could chew him out later. If this little meeting had shown him one thing, it was that she'd been right: Shepard needed a friend. _Whether or not you can be a friend to anyone right now remains to be seen._

 _. . ._

 _Maybe I can't. But for her, I'll sure as hell try. Shepard's got bigger problems than my identity crisis and the Archangel fallout put together._

"Doctor Chakwas briefed you?"

Garrus hummed. "More or less. Could use more details—the research data on the Collectors, what we know about the Omega-4 relay."

Shepard nodded. "I'll forward the information to you."

"I'll settle in and see what I can do at the forward batteries."

* * *

The _Normandy_ 's battery was impressive, but as Garrus began the work of calibrating the guns, he thought Cerberus could really do better. The cannons were basically what the _SR-1_ had come equipped with two years ago, and technology had marched on since then. Garrus typed up a firing algorithm and thought about how the ship could do better.

 _Since we're going through the Omega-4 relay, it might be a good idea to upgrade the guns. If Cerberus has the kind of resources they seem to, they can certainly afford it. Might see if any of Pallin's old contacts is interested in helping out the humans. The Hierarchy just adapted that cannon based off Sovereign's weaponry—can't do much better than that._

At one point, he was taken aback when the ship's AI offered to help him run the numbers. Naturally, he refused her help, and added on to the reasons Shepard was in it up to her neck with Cerberus.

When the test cycle had started running, and the machinery in the battery was clicking and humming through it, Garrus had to find another distraction, push the pain and restlessness to the back of his mind. He pulled up a blank file on his omni-tool, and ran an extranet image search for 'Zaeed.' He was sure he'd heard the man's name before. He downloaded a couple of links to read later, and started coding an encryption for the blank file.

An alert came up on his visor.

 **Local interference detected. Monitoring signal active in the radius.**

 **-Continue?**

 **-Trace?**

Garrus reflected that the spark of interest that ignited in him contemplating this new problem probably wasn't very healthy. _Ah, well._

Garrus dismissed both options, and instead of tracing the bug picking up on his encryption, he ran a blanket scan through the room. His omni-tool linked with his visor to outline all the spyware in the room in blue. A camera over the door. Listening devices behind the right gun, over the workbench in the battery, and in the baseboard on the left wall. And a short-range signal bug beneath the battery terminal that wouldn't just transmit everything he did on that console, but every signal broadcast and extranet site visited in a four-meter radius.

Garrus found and removed every bit of spyware in the room. He held them in his palm—small, sleek, unobtrusive. _Pathetic. Butler could get so much more—without the physical evidence._ He swallowed, and clenched his fist, careful not to crush them. Not yet. Instead, he brought up his omni-tool and ran a quick program he'd learned in C-Sec long ago to route the signal back to its source.

 _Damn. The AI servers. That AI is processing the raw data. I can't take her out yet; I don't know what all she does. Wait—someone else is streaming the data. Someone local._

Garrus left the battery. He went down the corridor, past the mess station, took a right, and stopped. _XO's office. Looks like Miranda's taking her orders from someone else._

Garrus hesitated for a split second. He had just woken up a couple hours ago. He certainly wasn't in any condition for a fight, and one thing he did remember from Omega was just how far Miranda had pushed herself to help get him out of there. _It probably isn't the best idea to open hostilities just yet . . ._

 _. . . Always was something of an idiot._

Garrus hit the access panel for Miranda's office. The door swished open.

Miranda looked up from her desk. "Garrus. Nice to see you up and about. I hear Doctor Chakwas has cleared you for duty."

"Do you?" Garrus asked pleasantly. He leaned up against the doorjamb, and let the camera slip out of his palm to rest in between his finger and thumb. He held it up so Miranda could see it. "Bad policy to spy on your own team," he remarked. "Destroys camaraderie and trust in the ranks."

Miranda paled, then raised her chin. "Someone's been busy," she said coolly. "The battery camera, I presume? Cerberus has no reason to trust Shepard and her associates, and you know it."

Garrus shrugged. "I'm told you spent a fortune bringing her back. You had to believe she would do something for you."

Miranda's eyes narrowed, and Garrus swore he _heard_ something in her snap. "Commander Shepard is the only one that can stop the Collector attacks on human colonies. She's the only one that can stop the Reapers. So yes, we brought her back, but I have to say, since the beginning of this operations she's shown little sign that she is willing or capable of returning on that investment. The second she received command of this ship she flew away from Omega—away from the one person in the galaxy that can possibly neutralize Collector technology, and I needn't tell you that's not you—and straight to the Alliance and the Council." Miranda scoffed. "They helped about as much as anyone could have expected.

"Since, she's detoured to complete a nonessential mission for mercenary personnel, and on the one occasion she had to establish trust with Cerberus, she instead turned over sensitive Cerberus information to the Alliance." Garrus listened, keeping his expression neutral, careful not to give away exactly how glad he was to hear Shepard clearly wasn't as trapped as she felt.

 _And someone's frustrated about that, isn't she? You've been wanting to say this for a while, Lawson. Sometimes the perp's under enough pressure already that the slightest nudge makes them sing like a bird._ "Are we spying on Shepard?" Miranda asked rhetorically. "Yes. As you so aptly pointed out, Cerberus spent a fortune to bring back the one woman in the galaxy that can stop the Reapers. I put two years of my life into Shepard—and so far it seems Shepard is more interested in stabbing us in the back than in doing the job we brought her back from the dead to do." She sniffed. "Maybe now we're letting her keep you, she'll realize we're not the enemy here."

That got him. Garrus stood up straight. "If you think you're _letting_ Shepard do anything, you're wrong," he warned. "She hates Cerberus, and she has good reason. Since she hasn't shot or arrested anyone in your operation just yet, I figure she's still thinking about working with you, but if you come at her that way, I guarantee you she'll take the Collectors and the Reapers down, but she'll take Cerberus down with them. And I'll help."

Miranda's chair slammed back against the wall as she stood, biotics flaring. Garrus tensed, but neither of them attacked. After a moment, the biotic field around Miranda subsided, and the electricity in the air died down.

Garrus let another second pass, then spoke again. "I'm not leaving her alone in the middle of all this," he promised Lawson. "That can work for you or against you. Which way it goes down depends on you." He activated his overload program then, and all the monitoring devices in his palm sizzled. The charge stung slightly. Garrus turned over his hand and opened it, offering Miranda the sparking devices. "Just so you know where we stand."

She got it alright. Miranda took the devices, chalk white in her fury, with a jaw like granite. Garrus smiled at her. "Have a nice day."

He walked out of her office. _Nothing like a new enemy to add a little sparkle to an otherwise mundane day._ Still, he thought, he'd probably better tell Shepard that Miranda had monitoring devices in place. He headed toward the CIC.

She wasn't there or in the comm room, and when he went down to engineering, he noticed the shuttle was gone. Shepard had gone groundside.

Garrus didn't know how he felt about that. Truth told, he'd had enough of Omega for a lifetime. He hadn't been cleared for field duty for another week, but he didn't like the idea of Shepard down there without him either. _We eliminated the gang leadership on Omega, but there's no way we took out all the mercs that belonged to them. I'm not the only one that's made new enemies lately. Someone could've got away. If they know her face . . ._

Garrus headed back up to Deck Two. This time, he made his way to the cockpit. Joker was there. Two years older, in a Cerberus uniform instead of an Alliance one, but he looked exactly the same. He'd always been a bit of a dick, but Garrus couldn't deny it was good to see him.

He spun his chair around when Garrus came in. "You know, I was wondering when you'd get around to saying hi," he said.

"Hi," Garrus answered.

"Ha ha, very funny." The pilot openly stared at Garrus's face. "Wow, they weren't kidding. They really shot half your face off down there, huh? How're you feeling?"

"About like they shot half my face off. Thanks for asking. Where's Shepard?"

"You just missed her," Joker said. "About an hour ago she went groundside with Jacob and Kasumi to pick up this salarian professor on Omega. The Collectors have these little robots, right? They find humans and shoot 'em up with some sort of paralytic. They're hoping this Solus guy can work out something to disable the robots or neutralize the agent or something. Should be almost as hard to get to him as it was to get to you, though—some kind of plague or whatever."

 _Gozu District. No wonder she didn't wait._ "For the past few weeks, yeah. People have been dropping like flies in the Gozu district—affects everyone that isn't human or vorcha."

Joker frowned. "That's weird, isn't it? You serious? Dextros and levos? Everyone that isn't human or vorcha?"

"Yeah. Probably lab-created—some psycho trying to get rid of all the aliens. We—I . . . was going to look into it . . . but I got caught up." He took a breath.

"Archangel, right." Joker paused. "You want to tell me what happened? Back after Alchera, you just disappeared on us, and then . . ."he held out his hands.

For a while after Saren, Garrus had kept in touch with the others. He'd been on the Citadel. Easy to get a hold of. But after Alchera and the memorial service—Garrus shifted. "Yeah. Well. Now I'm back." He leaned up against the wall. "You want to tell me about the team here?"

"Sure," Joker agreed. "I mean, Shepard probably covered most of it—"

"Could always use a fresh perspective."

Joker made a face. "Well, I'm hardly what you'd call a people person, but I'll tell you what I can. What do you want to know?"

"Jacob. He's the armory officer?"

"Yeah. You've probably met him—he's a nice guy. Big, impossibly good looking. Kinda hard not to hate him a little, really. I mean, how many push-ups do you think he does a day? It's insane!" Right. So Jacob had been the man in the comm room with Shepard, though Garrus hadn't noticed he was good looking before. He'd take Joker's word for it. "Anyway," Joker continued, "He and Miranda are pretty much the only really Cerberus agents on the _Normandy_. I don't think Shepard likes them much."

Garrus focused. "I thought the whole crew was Cerberus."

"Yeah, in a manner of speaking, but it's like for everyone else, this is their first mission," Joker complained. "You'd think if the Illusive Man wanted this mission to succeed as much as he says he does, he'd spring for some more experienced recruits. I don't know." His eyes lit up then. "Hey, have you met Kelly?"

"Yes, I had the pleasure earlier." His flat tone did all the talking for him.

Joker snickered. "Yeah, sorry about that. She has a thing for aliens. And psychology. She probably thinks that stick up your ass makes you 'damaged' and 'fascinating.'"

Garrus laughed and immediately regretted it. He thought wistfully of the pain meds Doctor Chakwas had offered back in the med bay, but immediately dismissed the idea. _Pain meds, stims—you only use those things when you absolutely need to. Anyway, after a while, they don't even work._

"What about the non-Cerberus crewmembers?" he asked. "I heard something about Shepard detouring to give a mercenary some help?"

"Yeah, that was Kasumi," Joker told him. "She had some business on Bekenstein or something. I don't know what went down there, but Shepard went groundside with her in a cocktail dress and came up with her armor smoking, and since, Kasumi's like the only person she talks to."

"Shepard wore a cocktail dress?" Garrus repeated, frankly skeptical.

Joker laughed. "Yeah, you should've seen it! It was totally bizarre. Like watching one of those crappy vids they sometimes make of her, except it was really her, not some asari romance star."

Garrus tried to imagine Shepard in a dress. It felt wrong, somehow. Every time he thought of her, he pictured her in armor, dodging fire on Feros to get in close and save the lives of people that were trying to kill her. Lowering the gun on Ontarom with white, trembling fingers. Firing a rifle that looked like it should break her in half to shoot Saren down on Virmire. Vaulting over his burning couch on Omega. Flipping over Garm's head to send a dozen bullets into the base of his skull. That was Shepard.

He cleared his throat. "Anyway. Kasumi?"

"She's cool," Joker assured him. "I mean, sure, she's a kleptomaniac, and the way she sneaks cloaked around the ship is creepy as hell, but I guess everyone's a little crazy on the _Normandy_. Anyway, she's got a bar in her cabin in the port-side observatory, and she doesn't mind sharing."

"What about the other one? Zaeed? He was with Shepard when she found me on Omega. Seems like bad news."

Joker's face fell. "Yeah, I think Shepard thinks so too. Zaeed's not like Kasumi. She's like a cat burglar or something. Zaeed's more your everyday, garden-variety killer for hire. Well. I say that. His market value is supposed to be through the roof. It's not like we've got anything to worry about, though, right? He's working for us. Shepard's . . . Shepard, and you're the freaking Archangel now. You two can pretty much out-badass Zaeed any day of the week." Joker shrugged, bored now. "Hey, you were down on Omega. Do you know the guy Shepard's gone to recruit? Professor Mordin Solus?"

Garrus turned away. "I've run into him once or twice. A couple of men on my team—my defensive biotic and my explosives expert—were old colleagues of his in the salarian Special Tasks Group. We went to his clinic once or twice before the plague hit."

"What happened to those guys?" Joker asked, completely oblivious.

Garrus didn't answer for a long moment, and even Joker seemed to realize he'd stepped in it. "They're dead," Garrus said finally.

"Oh, man, I didn't mean—"

"I'm going to go," Garrus said. "It was nice talking to you."

"Yeah, I guess. See you later, Garrus." But Garrus was already gone, lost in his own thoughts.

 _What the hell will I tell Solus when Shepard brings him up here? At least he ought to know if I should write anyone back on Sur'Kesh. Spirits, I have to write Nalah . . ._

* * *

When he made his way back to the battery, the testing cycle had finished. The readout told him he'd improved the accuracy by 7 percent, but he decided he could still get better numbers on the power and the fire rate. He fiddled with the controls again, allocating power draw, resequencing the firing procedure, and tried to work out what he wanted to say to Nalah.

By the time he'd drafted the letter and sent it, he could hear voices outside in the mess. One of them was the Cerberus officer's—Jacob's. Shepard was back.

He found Taylor in the line, getting his food from an older human man in a dirty apron. The man smiled at him when he saw him.

"Garrus Vakarian. You were on Commander Shepard's team when she took out those geth bastards and saved the Citadel. Mess Sergeant Rupert Gardiner. I'd shake your hand, but . . ." he gestured at his hands in their plastic, food-stained gloves, and shrugged.

"It's fine, sergeant. Nice to meet you."

"Shepard radioed up here from Omega a few days back when she realized you were coming. Requisitioned turian foodstuffs for you." He scratched behind his ear, inadvertently leaving a vestige of something that looked like mashed potatoes there. "Uh . . . it'll take me a while to fix some grub up for you, though."

Garrus was at once very grateful he didn't have the levo allergy and aware that he actually was getting hungry. "It's no trouble. I can wait."

"I'll get right on that, then," Gardiner assured him.

Taylor was leaving the line and heading off toward the tables. "Taylor!" Garrus called.

Jacob looked over. "Vakarian." He jerked his head, indicating Garrus should join him. Garrus did so, crossing the floor to sit across from Taylor at the table. Several crew members already eating saw him. He saw their heads come up, their eyes shift. Some of them moved a couple centimeters farther away. Garrus ignored them and focused on Taylor. He looked tired, but satisfied.

"Mission went well?" Garrus asked.

Taylor swallowed his mouthful and nodded. "Recruited the professor and cured the plague in the bargain. It's an experience, working with Shepard. Never seen anything like her."

In his voice Garrus heard the same awe he'd felt when he'd first signed on with Shepard, as he watched her root through the Citadel's underworld searching for leads, pounding the streets to save Tali, bust organized crime rings C-Sec had been trying to bring down for months in just days, incidentally, just going about her business.

"It wasn't just the plague, either," Taylor said, shaking his head. "She saved one of the professor's aides from a hostage situation. I thought, there's no way everyone's getting out of this alive, but the kid and the guys who wanted to shoot him all walked away without a scratch. No hard feelings, either, once the misunderstanding was cleared up. She sent doctors back to a dying batarian that tried to shoot her the first time he saw her. Saved his life too. She's something else."

"She is at that, and you never really get used to it," Garrus agreed. "I'm looking forward to working with her again."

Jacob swallowed another mouthful and lifted his fork, pointing it for emphasis. "If you haven't gotten used to it, I guess the rest of us don't have a shot. She told me about you, you know. Said you were the one person she'd want most with her in this mess, and after the stories I've heard about Omega, can't say I'm surprised."

Garrus watched Taylor across the table. It was about the best compliment Taylor could've given him, and he wouldn't be surprised if Shepard had actually said it. _Still, in C-Sec you learn when someone's trying to butter you up._ He hadn't forgotten that Joker had said Taylor was the only other long-term Cerberus agent on the _Normandy_.

 _Pretty sure Cerberus deliberately made sure everyone else onboard was a new recruit, either to relax Shepard or to limit the information she can gather about the organization, but Taylor knows what he's about._

"Actually, I'm fairly certain Shepard wouldn't have approved of almost anything I did on Omega," he answered.

Jacob smiled ruefully. "Yeah, she might have said something about that too," he admitted, and reluctantly, Garrus had to respect his honesty.

He stared past Jacob at the _SR-2_ logo on the wall. "Shepard doesn't generally approve of people taking the law into their own hands. She says the laws are usually there for good reason." He paused. "She's usually right," he muttered.

Jacob shrugged. "Sure, but sometimes the law works too slowly to help anyone, and on a place like Omega, there isn't a law to follow anyway. Never mind that the place could use one. Or several. I understand wanting to make a real difference, however you can. That's why I left the Alliance. Joined Cerberus."

He readdressed himself to his food, and Garrus looked down. _Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Taylor wanted to make a difference, and he joined a terrorist organization. How many people did you kill trying to make a difference? Drug dealers, murderers, arms traders, sure. How many of them stuck in that hellhole, just doing whatever they could to get by?_

 _It's not the same. They had a choice. Everyone has a choice!_

 _You had a choice, too._

"Hey, Vakarian!" Gardiner called. Garrus looked at Jacob.

Jacob's mouth was full of food, and he waved him off amiably. He ate enough for a biotic, Garrus noticed, and wondered if he had abilities similar to Miranda's.

Garrus rose and walked back over to the line. Gardiner handed him a tray, white plastic in contrast to the metal trays of the rest of the crew. "Sorry if it ain't what you're used to," Gardiner said apologetically. "I never learned to cook turian, see." He turned around and opened the top cabinet, and pointed at the top shelf, which was now tagged with a piece of blue tape. "If you ever want to make yourself something, Garrus, Shepard told me to keep the dextro rations up here. Got some turian fruit juice and some perishables in the fridge, too, tagged blue just like this."

"It's how we did it on the _SR-1_ ," Garrus confirmed. "Thanks, sergeant." He looked down at the mess on his plate. It looked like it might have been _suisa_ in some alternate, very depressing universe. Gardiner watched him avidly, and Garrus reluctantly loaded his fork and put some in his mouth.

Garrus avoided wincing only because he knew it would just hurt his face. He swallowed quickly, eager to get the taste out of his mouth as soon as possible. "It's actually better than the first drek Tucks served up, back in the day," he told the waiting mess sergeant. It was true, but it was the absolute best thing he could say about it.

Gardiner beamed. "Well. It's nice to have someone onboard who finally appreciates my cooking!"

"I didn't say it was good," Garrus corrected. He laughed, and choked another bite down. _One thing I didn't miss about living on the_ Normandy _. No way the humans can cook food that they never eat._ "It's fine. You'll get the hang of it," he assured Gardiner.

"You bet I will," Gardiner said, with determination that actually boded well, Garrus thought. _At least he takes pride in his job._

Garrus tipped Gardiner a wave, and headed back to the table. Jacob was gone, already taking his tray to the wash, so Garrus sat alone.

At least, he did for half a second. Then he saw someone outlined in red near the top of his field of vision. He looked up, and sighed, thinking back on what Joker had told him in the cockpit.

"Might as well come down," he called. "I can't see you, but my visor's thermal sensor knows you're there. That can't be too comfortable."

A crewwoman nearby looked at him like he was losing his mind, but the air shimmered. Garrus heard the gentle plop of cloth boots hitting the deck as Shepard's cat burglar swung down from the rafters. Then she shut off the tech, and the crewwoman down the table jumped almost half a meter into the air. "Fuck!" She reddened, and stared down at her food, muttering to herself, and Garrus turned away from her to smile at Kasumi.

Even uncloaked, she was dressed to avoid detection, in dark, drab colors with a full hood that was designed to make it difficult to ID her face. The only things Garrus could tell about her were that she was youngish, probably descended from peoples that had come from Earth's Asian continent, and sporting a lot of tech, some of which was illegal in Council space. His visor flagged several potential threats, but Kasumi just smiled back at him. She walked over to Gardiner's station, snagged a tray, and sat down across the table. "Cheater," she accused him in a light, playful voice.

"I could say the same thing about you," Garrus said. "Before Shepard found me on Omega I'd never seen cloaking tech that made the user almost completely undetectable to organics, but even Shepard's can only keep her hidden for a few seconds."

Kasumi laughed. "Cerberus's tech is cute, but they have a ways to go before they catch up to me," she boasted. "Now Shepard—give her a few months to adapt hers, and I don't think I could say the same." She extended her hand. "Kasumi Goto. You're Garrus, aren't you?"

"What gave it away?" Garrus drawled, shaking hands.

Kasumi smirked. "Well, it wasn't that you're the only turian onboard, if that's what you're thinking," she said. Garrus decided he liked her. "There's something in your aura that just stands up and says, 'badass.' Like Shepard's, but in a more vigilante-y kind of way."

"My reputation precedes me, I see."

"On this ship? You bet. But in my line of work, I'd heard about you a while ago, Archangel."

"And what line of work would that be?" Garrus challenged her, wanting to see if she'd own it.

She didn't. Instead, she shook her finger. "Ah, ah, ah. Now that would be telling. I just wanted to welcome you to the _Normandy_. I heard about your little confrontation with Miranda earlier. Not everyone here is Cerberus—or former Alliance. Some of us are like you."

Granted, her statement meant she'd been spying on him, too, but somehow, it was different when Kasumi said she'd been spying. _For one, she admitted it without my having to bring it up. Though I didn't see her before. Where was she? Anyway, she's outright saying she's not Cerberus in a room full of Cerberus operatives. That takes some guts._

"Like me," Garrus repeated, choking down another mouthful of Gardiner's dismal suisa. "And what am I?"

"You're here to take out the Collectors," Kasumi said. "But more than that, you're here to watch out for Shepard. Like Doctor Chakwas and Joker, only I'm guessing you're a little deadlier than a pilot and a doctor."

"Just a little," Garrus said. She was right, and it was something he'd recognized right away: protecting Shepard, working with her again, had to be one of the only reasons Joker and Doctor Chakwas had agreed to work for Cerberus, too. The only trouble was, now they were two more reasons Shepard had to stay. If Shepard turned hostile, Jeff Moreau and Karin Chakwas were two ready-made hostages, and he'd be damned if Cerberus didn't know it. Shepard would do a lot of things and put up with a lot of crap to keep them safe. He'd always been under the impression that Shepard regarded Joker as a little brother of sorts, and she actually called the doctor 'Mom,' more often than not.

"A little or a lot, I'm with you," Kasumi promised. "If you need me to, I can disable any surveillance devices in the battery for you."

 _So even though she's heard about your showdown with Miranda, she wasn't actually in the room. Good to know she doesn't have tech that can dampen her thermal signature she just wasn't using just now._ "Thanks, but I took care of it."

He saw Kasumi's face move, like she'd raised her eyebrows beneath her hood. "I'm impressed," she said, and actually sounded like she was. "Shepard took care of the devices in her cabin too. But she needed my help to stop Miranda from censoring her mail. Practically the first thing she asked me to do for her."

"You realize now you've said that, the devices in here will mean Miranda will find whatever you did and undo it by tomorrow," Garrus pointed out.

"Oh, I'm scrambling them," Kasumi assured him. "And I don't care if anyone else hears. They won't tell her, you know. No one _really_ likes her."

Garrus accepted this easily enough. "Has it really been that bad?" he asked. He could see now why Shepard had detoured to Bekenstein. Whatever she and Kasumi had done there, she'd gotten Goto completely on her side, and the first thing she had asked for was for Kasumi to help her run counterintelligence efforts.

He saw Kasumi's cheerful face grow serious in the shadows of her hood. "I don't mind so much," she admitted. "In my world, everyone spies on everyone else. I've learned ways to get around it. It's kind of fun. But Shepard's different. She's been really on edge. I think she misses the Alliance, and all of you—all the people that helped her take down Saren, I mean. I hear Shepard ran into your old friend Tali'Zorah on Freedom's Progress when she was just starting out. She asked for her help, but Tali doesn't trust her now she's with Cerberus. She hasn't said so, but everyone can tell she feels really alone."

Garrus remembered Shepard in the comm room. Their briefing hadn't been long, but what she had said had definitely made an impact. _"I don't trust them, and right now I don't trust me, either. But I trust you."_

He tapped his fork against his plate.

"It's good you're here," Kasumi concluded.

Garrus regarded her. "I think it's good we're both here," he told her. She smiled at him, and Garrus took his last bite just as Shepard walked into the mess with Mordin Solus.

She caught sight of him and waved. Then Mordin saw him. _Just like that, the warm fuzzies are gone._ Garrus stiffened as Mordin walked over with Shepard.

The professor frowned. His eyes did the flick and hover over Garrus's new scars. It was already becoming familiar. Garrus shifted. "Good doctor," Mordin remarked. "Reconstruction almost seamless. Should heal nicely. Could have done a better job myself, of course. Improve upon sutures, synthesize graft tissue. Minimize scarring. Would you like my help?"

Garrus forced a smile. "That's not necessary, professor. You'll need to focus all your efforts on figuring out how to stop the Collectors."

Mordin spread his hands. "True. Nevertheless, if problems, know where to find me. Setting up in laboratory opposite armory on Deck Two." He paused, sucked in a breath. Blinked. "Did good job covering up intel on Omega. Never guessed Archangel's Garrus was Garrus Vakarian, C-Sec officer to help Shepard take down Saren Arterius. Oversight. Underestimation. Should have known Erash and Mierin would not get involved with amateur. Won't happen again."

Garrus closed his eyes.

"Strange to end up in same place now," Mordin remarked. "Good to have you here. Know Erash held you in high regard—Mierin and Krul as well."

Garrus couldn't hold it in any longer. "I'm sorry, professor. They're gone. I failed them."

Mordin looked hard at him. "Not your fault. Cleaning up Omega, dangerous prospect." He shook his head. "Archangel knew. Each man's choice, find meaning in elimination of crime on Omega. Impossible, but noble goal. Their responsibility. Still. Mercs killed them, Garrus. Not you."

For all the clinical quality of his analysis, there was a shade of sympathy and sorrow in Mordin's expression. Kasumi, watching, had her mouth open slightly, and as for Shepard, for all her jokes about his face in the comm room earlier, now her face was twisted into an expression of such helpless anguish Garrus couldn't take it. She held out her hand, and Garrus pushed his chair back abruptly, seized his empty tray in both hands, and stood.

"Thanks, professor."

He left.

* * *

 **A/N: The beginning of this chapter is concurrent with the end of Chapter Two in** _ **Resurrection**_ **, "Trust."**


	3. Purgatory: The Fields of Punishment

**The Fields of Punishment: In Greek mythology, a section of Tartarus in the Underworld where the wicked were eternally tortured for their crimes.**

* * *

III

Purgatory: The Fields of Punishment

"So what's the verdict, Mom?" Shepard asked, leaning up against the wall of the infirmary, arms crossed.

Doctor Chakwas carefully folded a new bandage over the worst of the scarring. He felt the sealant reattach to his face. A lot of the pain was starting to fade, but the damn bandages—and the healing flesh beneath them—did itch. "You're healing well, Garrus," Chakwas said. "Your body seems to have accepted the cybernetic hearing implant without much trouble. I want you back next week so I can continue to monitor the scar tissue, but I see no problems with your returning to active duty if you feel up to it."

"Oh, I'm up to it," Garrus promised. "Thanks, doctor."

"Likewise," Shepard said from the back of the room near his locker. She opened it without so much as asking for permission. "We've been parked next to _Purgatory_ for an hour, and I need the most badass turian in the galaxy back in action." She walked back over with his rifle, and raised her eyebrow. "Well? Gear up, soldier. If you want another weapon, we've got more guns in the armory."

Slowly, Garrus took his rifle back from her. She smiled at him. Their mission was supposed to be a routine pick-up, but considering Jack was a prisoner that might not want to join their crew, they had to be ready for anything, and that smile promised trouble.

 _Damn._

He slid off the cot, and her smile widened. She turned and headed out of the med bay, presumably toward the armory to collect her own weapons.

"That smile should be outlawed," Garrus grumbled.

He wasn't sure if he was speaking to the doctor or himself or if he'd meant to speak at all, but it still startled him when Chakwas replied, "Just don't let it distract you in the field. If things go badly on the prison ship, I want you both back here alive, you understand? Neither of you are to let yourselves get blown up again."

Garrus blinked. "I didn't mean it that way," he said, wondering belatedly whether he actually _had_. Doctor Chakwas's lips twitched, as if she wasn't convinced, either.

"You'd better hurry after her, Garrus," she advised.

So Garrus did.

* * *

The second they stepped off the shuttle, Garrus had a bad feeling about _Purgatory_ , and it had nothing to do with the facts that according to the mission briefing, it was supposedly a prison for some of the worst terrorists and mass murderers in the galaxy, or that Shepard had chosen Massani and Taylor along with him to assist her in escorting Jack off the station.

No. Garrus's issues were more to do with how he'd heard secondary and tertiary locking mechanisms engage after the airlock closed, even though looking around, the area was obviously secure—designed for visitors.

 _No prisoners in sight, and every exit and entrance into the place is under armed guard. They aren't worried about escape attempts, so why cut us off from the shuttle? Could be protocol, but . . ._

Every guard in the room was wearing a Blue Suns uniform.

 _The Blue Suns are an enormous organization. Tarak's operation was just one arm, and unless an escaped merc got a lot closer than we thought, there's no way they know our faces, but if the Suns are running this establishment, it could explain why this prison is willing to release a dangerous convict to Cerberus for creds, and Commander Shepard could have bigger problems here._

Garrus's fingers twitched. He and Shepard exchanged a glance. She gave him the shadow of a nod. _Be ready._

At his side, Garrus moved his fingers in the Alliance hand signal for the same, and he sensed rather than saw Jacob Taylor straighten. Massani was already on his guard, looking around the room, his mismatched eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Shepard forged ahead, and stopped when she came to the guard stationed on the ramp in the center of the room, obviously their reception. Turian, tall, helmeted, he stood at parade rest but Garrus could tell he was ready for action at a moment's notice.

"Welcome to the _Purgatory_ , Shepard," he said. "Your package is being prepped and you can claim it shortly. As this is a high-security vessel, you need to relinquish your weapons before we proceed."

Two more guards started toward them, ostensibly to remove their weapons, but Shepard lifted her hand. "I can't do that," she said, calmly, but in a voice that rang with authority.

In a flat second every gun in the room was leveled at them. Garrus, Jacob, and Zaeed had also drawn, surrounding Shepard, who didn't—but didn't signal for them to holster their weapons, either.

"Everyone, stand down!" The voice rang from an observation platform above. Reluctantly, the ship guards lowered their weapons. Only after they had done so did Garrus lower his, and Jacob and Zaeed followed suit, though none of them put the guns away.

The man that had spoken was a turian, in Blue Suns armor like the rest, but without his helmet. He was barefaced, and the cracks and weathering on his dark brown plates proclaimed him to be middle-aged at best.

 _Still, those are high-quality shields, and the way he's moving—he hasn't let himself go. This is a man to watch._

He walked down the steps toward Shepard. "Commander, I'm Warden Kuril," the new turian said. "This is my ship. Your weapons will be returned on the way out. You must realize this is just a standard procedure."

Shepard folded her arms. "It's my standard procedure to keep my gun."

Kuril held her gaze for a lengthy moment, testing her resolve, but Shepard held her ground, and it didn't surprise Garrus in the least when Kuril backed down. "Let them proceed," he told his men. "Our facility is more than secure enough to handle four armed guests. We're bringing Jack out of cryo," he informed Shepard. "As soon as the funds clear, you can be on your way. If you'll follow me to outprocessing for the pickup, Commander."

Now Shepard signaled him, and Garrus holstered his gun. The others followed his lead. All of them were ready for action the second the least little thing went wrong, but it was Shepard's policy never to start a fight if there didn't absolutely need to be one. "Let's go," she said.

Kuril nodded, and led them through the door opposite. As it closed behind them, Garrus again heard the triple lock engage. _Probably automated protocol, then. I still don't like it._

This area was different. One wall of the corridor Kuril led them through now was an observation window out onto an enormous room, riddled with catwalks. The walls of the room were lined with cylindrical black metal units. They reminded him of the dead stasis pods on Ilos, but here, each was big enough for an elcor to take a couple paces back and forth. As they looked out over the area, a mechanical arm with a claw attached moved a cylinder from one unit bank to another.

"Cell Block Two," Warden Kuril said, stopping at a guardrail. "As you can see, we keep tight control over the population. Each prisoner's cell is a self-contained modular unit." His mandibles tightened in an unpleasant smirk. "I've blown a few out the airlocks as an example. This ship is made up of thirty cell blocks identical to this one. We house thousands of criminals. We can put the whole place in lockdown on a moment's notice. Nothing goes wrong here."

Shepard ignored Kuril's boasting. Cool as dark space, she just looked out at the cell block and observed, "Maintaining a population this size in space can't be cheap."

"We can cut corners that governments can't," Kuril explained. "And each prisoner brings in a fee from his homeworld. These individuals are violent and their home planets pay well to keep them here."

Ever so subtly, Shepard leaned back on her left leg, closer to Garrus and the others. She raised an eyebrow at Kuril. "What happens if the homeworld doesn't want to pay?"

Kuril spread his hands. "We explain that we can't maintain the prisoner without their help, so we'll be forced to release him back onto his homeworld . . . at an unspecified place and time."

 _Surprise, surprise. It turns out the Blue Suns are the Blue Suns, no matter what service they think they're doing for the galaxy_. "So it's an extortion racket," Garrus said flatly.

Kuril scowled. "You don't have to agree with my methods, but don't question my motives. These are despicable people, and I'm keeping them locked up." But he'd lost interest in showing off, and he started moving through the corridor again.

"How'd you end up here, anyway?" Shepard asked, endeavoring to maintain civility.

"I was in law enforcement on Palaven," Kuril answered. "I got sick of seeing criminals escape out into the galaxy to carry on with their crimes. Bounty hunters aren't dependable."

Zaeed took exception to this. "You're not hiring the right ones," he growled.

"Eventually I hit upon this idea," Kuril continued, ignoring Massani. "Keep the criminals in space, and the galaxy is a safer place."

Shepard slowed. She frowned. "You do this because you think it's necessary?"

Kuril stopped. "Every day I see the worst sapient life has to offer," he explained. "Governments are soft, unwilling to make the hard choices. Someone had to stand up and make the galaxy safe."

Garrus saw Shepard swallow, tense. Jacob as well, though he suspected for a different reason. Massani stood there completely unbothered, but the rest of them, for a moment—well. Looking one another in the face had suddenly become rather difficult.

 _Ah, conscience, my old friend. How I have not missed your nagging. How can any of us claim to be any better than this merc who extorts planets, cuts corners in prison conditions, and occasionally sells off convicts in order to keep violent criminals away from innocent civilians? He thinks he's doing what he has to, but you can rationalize away any means and say it's just, necessary to achieve a noble end. Taylor joined a terrorist organization because he doesn't think the Alliance is protecting human beings well enough, and right now, he might be right. Does it mean he should have joined Cerberus? Me? I killed people—hundreds of people, hoping that I could do some good in the worst place on the galaxy. Did I help? Maybe. I hope so. But does it make all those murders right? Even Shepard—she's trying to save thousands of colonists from the Collector abductions, save the galaxy from the Reapers, but she's here buying a person to do it—a person that might not exactly be a willing recruit. We'd all of us like to think we have the moral high ground here, but do we really?_

After a long, awkward pause, Shepard recovered herself. "Can you tell me about Jack?" And if her voice and manner was a little subdued, Kuril didn't comment.

Instead, he looked surprised. "Cerberus hasn't told you? Jack is the meanest handful of violence and hate I've ever encountered," he said, sounding genuinely awed. "Dangerous, crazy, and very powerful. You'll see soon enough."

Garrus frowned. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet the human that could trigger that kind of reaction in the seemingly calloused Warden, far less that he wanted to work with them. _Ah, well. Too late now._

He couldn't help noticing Shepard shift so her pistol was more accessible, too. "Let's get on with this," she said.

The Warden led them through another door. "In a place like this there must be escape attempts," Jacob remarked.

Kuril snorted. "We're in space. They have nowhere to go, and they know it. But still, we exercise extreme caution. These are dangerous individuals. We have many ways to control the population." Kuril paused to look out of another observation window into another cell block. On the catwalks below, it appeared two prisoners were getting into an altercation. A guard below shouted something, and pressed a button on his omni-tool, and a tower emerged from the catwalk guardrail. It actually emitted two mass effect fields that forced the prisoners apart and contained them. Garrus stared.

 _Self-contained cell units. Thirty cell blocks. Mass effect field riot deterrents. Even for the Blue Suns, this is high-tech and high-budget. No way Kuril's turning over those kinds of creds through extortion alone._

 _Jack's not the only one they're selling off._

Kuril's omni-tool buzzed. He looked at it for a moment, then glanced back up at Shepard. "I'm going to confirm that the funds from Cerberus cleared," he said abruptly. He gestured down the hall. "Outprocessing is straight down this hall. Just keep going past the interrogation rooms and the supermax wing. I'll catch up with you later, Shepard." He gave her an assessing look before he left, and his mandible twitched.

Several of Garrus's alarm bells started ringing, but Kuril was gone before he could ask any questions. "Shepard," he murmured.

"I know," she replied in the same low undertone. "Let's just get Jack and get out of here. Fast."

She led the way down the hall Kuril had indicated. Before too long, they heard anguished shouts. Anguished shouts, and vicious, angry blows.

"Interrogation, huh?" Jacob said under his breath.

"No one walks away from torture unchanged," Zaeed muttered. "Not the subject, not the torturer himself. Never found torture worth the price, myself."

Garrus was disgusted. One of the first things they taught in C-Sec basic training was that torture was a stupid way to get information. "Forget the price: it's not even effective. After a point, victims admit to anything to make the pain stop."

The torture scene came into view. A small hallway of isolated cells, each containing a prisoner, and in the first, a turian guard was brutally beating a human prisoner in a dirty, numbered jumpsuit. He kicked the man, pounded him. Each blow elicited a raw, echoing shout. The prisoner's voice had gone hoarse, and Garrus saw smears of dark, red blood on the guard's gauntlets, boots, and all over the cell floor.

Shepard's jaw tightened, and her eyes flashed. Another turian guard was watching the beating, arms folded. The turian inside the cell stomped on the prisoner's groin. Zaeed winced, Jacob gave a little groan of sympathy, and even Garrus flinched, but the turian guard outside the cell didn't so much as move a muscle. When Shepard came up to him, he looked over at her. He seemed almost bored. "Is there something I can do for you?"

Shepard was seething. "There's no excuse for beating a prisoner who can't fight back," she spat.

The guard chuckled cruelly. "This is a massage compared to what his victims went through."

Another blow ripped the prisoner's jumpsuit open, exposing a long, wicked gash that bled freely. He was sobbing in between outcries. Shepard's lip curled as she looked up at the supervising guard. "So, what, you're ranking yourself on a scale with murdering criminals?" she demanded.

This pulled Garrus up short, and he dropped his gaze. _Humans often portray justice as a scale to be balanced—this for that. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, and they consider themselves merciful if they stop short of demanding that. It's always been what's made sense to me—but Shepard doesn't see things that way. To her, justice has always meant keeping to a higher standard: no matter what methods, what crimes your enemy commits, the laws that made them wrong for him mean those methods and crimes are still wrong for you, even to punish him with._

 _She's wrong. She has to be. There has to be retribution for people like these. People like_ him _. Right? They have to pay for what they've taken from others._

His eye landed on the burned out name on his visor rim. He looked away.

The turian guard was uncomfortable, too. "Look, we have orders, lady," he said, as a particularly vicious kick to the prisoner's torso resulted in a clear snap of breaking ribs.

Shepard scoffed. "You're not important enough to make your own decisions?"

The guard raised his hands. "I admit, I sometimes get tired of this. Does this really get us anything useful?"

Shepard caught his gaze and stared him down. "Stop this," she said softly. "For your own sake."

Garrus wasn't sure if it was a threat or a plea, but it worked. "Yeah, you're right," the guard said. "Call it off!" he yelled at the guard inside the cell. The guard beating the prisoner raised his hands, let them fall, and walked out the other exit in disgust. "At least for now."

Shepard looked sick, but she jerked her head at Garrus and the others to continue on after her, only for the man in the next cell to flag her down.

"Hey, hey guys, over here!" he called. "Let me ask you something."

Garrus held in a huff of annoyance as Shepard walked over. _Shepard, you were the one who said we should get out of here. Fast. Remember? Guess not._

This prisoner looked healthy enough, for now, though he was filthy. The "780" on his jumpsuit was just visible through the grime and dirt that covered him like a second skin. Like the man being interrogated, he was human. "If you're buying prisoners, can you buy me?" he asked. "Man, I don't care where you take me or what you do to me. It's got to be better than this."

Garrus folded his arms. "We're here for Jack," he said.

The man's eyes widened. His arms came up, and he took two full steps back, which in his tiny cell, took him more than halfway to the wall opposite them. "Jack? Forget what I just said. I don't want to go nowhere with you," he said vehemently.

Shepard glanced sideways at Garrus. "I thought this was a prison, not a market," she muttered.

The prisoner spoke up again. "Sometimes people buy cons so they can do some punishing of their own, if you understand," he explained. "Warden sells us to whoever can pay enough."

 _Sometimes I wish I wasn't right._ Purgatory _is just a glorified slave market with exceptionally dangerous merchandise._

Shepard jerked her head at Prisoner 780. "What are you in for?"

The man shrugged. "I killed a few people. Only about twenty or so. And I blew up that one habitat. Small time compared to most of the guys here."

Shepard took a small step back. She obviously hadn't been expecting the guy to be a mass murderer. Zaeed chuckled darkly. Garrus was with him. _Funny thing about criminals. You get to the point where you stop expecting them to look a certain way. You look at Saleon, Wayne, Williams—what is it the humans say? Don't judge a book by its cover? Not like any of them have read paper books in almost two centuries, but the point stands. You never know the evil someone's capable of just by looking at them. And everyone's capable of it._

Shepard recovered quickly. "It must be bad here," she muttered.

780's eyes darkened. "Yeah. And you got to watch out. Damn, but someone's always after your stuff. Your smokes, clothes, your _—_ "he took another glance at Shepard and changed what he'd been about to say. "Pride. I haven't taken a shower in three months."

Shepard's face softened. She jerked her head at the cell next door, where the guy they'd been beating was slumped in a bloody, pulpy mess in the corner, sobbing, fighting just to breathe. "So what about that guy? Why were they beating him? Does he know something?"

780 shook his head. "Nah, that's Bimmy. He don't know nothing. He offed someone in the showers yesterday, I think. Guy he killed was worth a lot to the warden." He stared at the sagging man for a long moment. "Yeah, sucks to be Bimmy right now."

Shepard stared at him, too. "They were really laying into him. Have they ever killed anyone by accident?" she asked.

780's brow furrowed. "Haven't heard of anyone dying. Warden can't make money off us if we're dead. Funny thing, though: the more a guard does it, the meaner he gets. So they rotate 'em through."

Shepard glanced over at Zaeed. The merc was grim. She looked back at 780. "Tell me more about Jack," she ordered him.

Garrus could tell she'd been hoping their conversation would relax the convict for just this purpose, but it hadn't done any good. He shuddered. "The worst trouble you ever saw mixed with some crazy and way too much biotic power. That's all I'm saying," he said. His lips were tight, and Garrus knew they weren't getting anything else out of him. So did Shepard.

She looked at all of them. "We should go," she said.

780 sighed. "Wish I could go."

They continued down the route Kuril had indicated until they finally came to another door. Garrus wondered if they'd have any trouble—the Warden hadn't issued them any security passes or anything, but the door opened smoothly. As they entered, Garrus spotted a camera above the door. _Guess Kuril called ahead. Nice of him._

A technician was at a console just inside. He waved them to the other side of a long, wide room. Metal benches were spaced throughout. Each bench had fixtures attached to it where chains could pass through. Apart from the benches and the console, there was nothing else in the room. As far as visitation areas went, it was fairly low security, but Garrus had seen the kind of muscle they had on call here. _But if they compensate for the lack of tech in outprocessing with manpower, why aren't any of the guards here, especially if Jack is as dangerous as they say?_

The back of Garrus's neck started to prickle. He turned, to see the tech had gone and the door had shut behind him, and even before Shepard opened the door at the far side of the room to see nothing but one of Kuril's empty "self-contained" units, he knew.

The comms crackled, and Kuril's voice filled the room. "My apologies, Shepard. You're more valuable as a prisoner than a customer. Drop your weapons and proceed into this open cell. You will not be harmed."

They'd all had their weapons out before he finished talking. _But if he thinks we'll be dropping them any time soon . . . well, we'll just see._

Shepard's voice was venomous. "Yeah. I thought it might go something like this. You talked up your noble intentions with this prison, but it turns out you're a criminal like the rest."

"Activate systems!" Kuril cried. The door they'd just come through opened, and Blue Suns mercs came pouring through.

"Heads up!" Garrus shouted, diving for cover behind the visitation benches.

Shepard had already faded completely away. Jacob lit up blue _—Ah, so he_ is _a biotic—_ and a batarian combatant was pulled from the back through the line, scattering their attackers into momentary disarray. Zaeed's assault rifle started up, and two rifle shots rang out at the same time.

Garrus's target—a human engineer that had been punching up something nasty on his omni-tool, fell back almost a meter—his shield destroyed. The turian with the assault rifle at the head of the line went sideways, and his brain matter went all over a second guard beside him. The second guard cried out, momentarily disoriented, and Garrus had reloaded and pasted _his_ brains over the floor before he'd adjusted his grip on his shotgun.

Shepard appeared across the room from where she'd flanked the enemy, behind another bench with her rifle at her shoulder.

"Gotcha!"

The eyes of the batarian caught up in Jacob's biotic field began to boil away, floating away from his head as he screamed until the field dissipated and gravity got a hold of him again. His dead weight fell to the deck with an audible crack, as Zaeed shot the human engineer trying to climb to his feet to mincemeat.

"Press forward!" Shepard ordered. "We're not letting these bastards bottle us up in here!"

Jacob took point, Zaeed at his flank. Garrus and Shepard took up the rear as they charged across the room. Outside in the corridor, Garrus heard the synthetic whining of artificial servos.

"Mechs!" he warned.

Shepard laughed, and it really should not have been as thrilling as it was. "Please. Massani, Taylor! Focus on the guards. Garrus and I have got the bots!"

"Aye-aye, Commander!" Jacob bellowed. He charged out into the corridor, Massani on his heels, assault rifle roaring.

"Reinforce outprocessing! Shepard is loose!" Kuril yelled over the com. Beside Garrus, Shepard snorted. She drew her Locust and shot out both camera and speaker.

The mechs came howling. If LOKI mechs were the corporations' answer to the krogan, FENRIS mechs were their answer to the varren. They were fast, programmed to take an enemy to the ground in a vicious, overwhelming assault. Equipped with electric fields to immobilize opponents and mini mass effect generators to tear them apart. Expensive to produce, so fortunately, there weren't many of them across the galaxy, but once or twice Archangel had gone up against security firms that had bought some. Weaver had had a nice scar on his bicep from when they'd taken him down once. He'd been down all of three seconds before Ripper had smashed the mechs into so many nuts and pieces of shrapnel, but in that time they'd done a real number on his arm. That had been a day they'd had to visit Mordin's clinic.

The thing was never to let them get close. As the mech dogs rounded the corner of the corridor, Garrus and Shepard triggered their omni-tools as one. Shepard's program was a little more sophisticated than his own—rather than simply frying shields and synthetic circuits, it rerouted the power she drew back into her own shields, a trick she'd learned from Tali—but for all that, it didn't pack the same punch as his. It didn't matter. When their combined tech attacks hit the mechs, they crashed and slid, sizzling and sparking, knocking the mercs in front of them out of the way like pins and electrocuting anyone unfortunate enough not to be wearing protective insulation.

"Whoa!" Jacob yelped, jumping to the side to avoid the wreckage. "Watch it!"

Zaeed shot the last guy moaning in the hallway.

Shepard stepped out of the room, smirking. "You're welcome. Come on!"

Zaeed pointed his gun at a painted sign on the wall. There was an arrow pointing to the left and a painted sign that said **CRYOGENIC STORAGE.**

"Let's get Jack out of the freezer!" he said.

Shepard swung around and headed in the direction Massani indicated instead with a nod of thanks. "Stay alert!" Garrus yelled, as he heard booted feet in the distance and four more guards rounded the corner.

He had his rifle to his shoulder again before he'd finished speaking and had fired off a shot. A split second before it connected he saw a blue flash—saw the confident expressions on the four guards' faces evaporate as their two of their shields were hacked and stolen. Then one of their faces was gone—plastered over the sleek bulkhead. _BLAT!_ The other's armor crumpled in as Jacob's shotgun blast hit him point blank, sending him flying.

One of the survivors was panicked, unloading his assault gun trying to stop Jacob's charge. But just as Taylor's barriers gave, he smashed into his assailant, throwing him into the wall. The guard slid down and Taylor shot him in the head twice. The other guy dived for cover, at a low extension of the bulkhead Garrus imagined had been set up in case of prison riots for just that purpose. He fired at Garrus, but Shepard, with her strengthened shields, hurled herself in the way. The shrill chirping of her Locust ricocheted off the metal walls. Garrus was already moving with her, constructing a targeting solution as he did.

He fired above the bulkhead, just hitting the top of the last guy's helmet, taking out his shields and knocking him from cover. That was all the help Shepard's Locust needed. Garrus saw the guard's chest collapse as no less than eight bullets hit it in less than a second.

Shepard kept running, barreling down the hall toward cryogenic storage. Taylor picked himself up and followed her, shaken, but not hurt, with Zaeed behind him and Garrus in the rear, punching up a quick hack on his omni-tool, just in case.

He saw the orange light over the door that led to cryogenic storage turn green as they approached. "Good work!" Shepard called back at him, punching the door and ducking on the outside of the doorway.

Good thing, too. The second it opened, three shots came through. "Shepard is loose! Shepard is loose! Get people down here!" someone screamed.

There was a single human technician in the room beyond with a pistol. No armor. His face twisted in hatred and fear as he fired blindly until his thermal clips ran out and his pistol just clicked and steamed. Garrus almost felt sorry for him as Zaeed gunned him down.

 _Almost_ being the operative word.

A silence fell over the room. There was no sound except everyone's slightly more rapid breathing. All of them entered the room. The door hissed shut behind him, and Garrus heard the familiar triple locking mechanism engage.

Aside from the pool of blood forming under the technician's corpse, this room was like outprocessing—clean and empty, aside from the console the technician had apparently been standing at and an enormous observation window. To the left, there was another door.

The window looked out on a ramp that led up to a single cryogenic stasis chamber. It was closed, but the green lights over the sliding hatch told them the inhabitant's vitals were still strong. Two as yet dormant YMIR mechs stood guard over the chamber. Shepard examined the console.

"Damn it! He locked everything down!" she snapped. "Hold on—I can probably hack it."

Garrus and Jacob both already had their omni-tools up, scanning the computer systems. Garrus opened his mouth, but Jacob spoke first. "Shepard, if you hack that control, every door on the cell block opens!" he warned.

 _Prison riot on a massive scale, with some of the worst mass murderers and psychos known to the galaxy all rushing to settle scores, help their buddies, take what they can, or make a break for it before the guards get it under control again. It'll be chaos. But—_

"It's the only way," Zaeed concluded grimly.

Shepard tapped her fingers on the edge of the console, and he could see her mind working. _Scrub the mission and get out, or get what we came for, damn the consequences?_ She grit her teeth and raised her chin, and Garrus adjusted his grip on his rifle.

"Doing it," she said. "Be ready."

She pressed a few buttons on the console in a certain sequence, and the lights over the sliding hatch started flashing. Alarms started blaring through the ship, as the cold air from the chamber reacted with the warm air of the ship and set steam rising.

The hatch opened, and a platform with a standing figure bound head, foot, and neck to a vertical stasis table rose from the ground. As the steam cleared, Garrus, Shepard, Taylor, and Massani stared at the rapidly defrosting prisoner.

 _Powerful human biotic_. That was all they'd known going in. Since they'd learned even Warden Kuril and the serial killers in this place were scared of Jack, and unlike the others in this place, they'd been forced to keep Jack in cryogenic stasis to keep the convict under control. Garrus didn't know what he'd expected Jack to look like, really.

 _Just not like this._

"That's Jack?"

They were looking at a wiry, rangy human _girl_ , probably not too much older than Tali, stripped to the waist, except for a makeshift leather harness that barely covered the most sensitive areas of her anatomy. The rest of her was covered in a dizzying array of colorful tattoos, with no identifiable pattern Garrus could see. They did not quite obscure the long, raised scars on her arms, neck, and abdomen—the ones that _were_ in a very obvious pattern of surgical experimentation.

As her brain reawakened, her arched dark eyebrow twitched—aside from the two sculpted eyebrows, her head was shaved clean, and tattooed like the rest of her.

Jack's eyes—golden brown—snapped open. Garrus saw her register the alarms ringing throughout the ship. She looked down at her hands, bound to the cryogenic platform with thick metal binders. And then she lit up blue.

The YMIR mechs that had been inactive before began powering up as Jack ripped one arm free of her restraints, then the other. She bent the collar restraining her neck out of place. Jerked one foot, then the other out of the foot binders. Her heavy combat boots hit the deck as the YMIR mechs targeted her, obviously programmed to shoot her down.

Jack launched herself at one, a juggernaut of biotic energy.

"We have to get down there!"

Shepard was already headed toward the door on their left that led to the cryogenic storage area. Red lights started flashing. The deck rocked beneath their feet as something exploded, and close.

"Warning! Warning!" a synthesized female voice said over the comms. The ship's computer, warning of a bulkhead breach or some other catastrophic failure.

"They're attacking Jack!" Garrus shouted.

They ran into the cryogenic stasis chamber. The metal binders that had held Jack were twisted and melted open, and not two meters away, lay the smoking chassis of one YMIR mech. The other's head had been carried halfway across the room from _its_ chassis, and lay sparking in front of a jagged tear in the bulkhead. "I think Jack's attacking them," Shepard called back. "Come on!"

She charged into the breach. It let them into a maintenance walk behind the walls. The red lighting shone off blue smears on the bulkhead as Kuril yelled over the comms, "All guards, restore order! Lethal force authorized, but don't kill Jack! Techs, lockdown! Lockdown!"

They found the turian corpse dismembered in front of the blackened wreckage of a fuse box. Without slowing, Shepard knelt as she went. Her hands darted into his cowl, and a keycard snapped off a chain around his neck. She thrust it in her belt and kept going. The magnetic access would open all locked down doors in their path. Even Jack couldn't rip open walls forever—and it looked like she hadn't. There was no breach going into the next ward. She'd used the door.

Shepard nodded at them all. "Fan out," she ordered. "Don't draw attention if you can help it. It's chaos in there—if the guards and prisoners want to kill each other instead of us, let them. Remember: our objective is to get Jack and get out."

The door ahead lit up green, and they entered into the prison block. "Might be easier said than done, Commander," Jacob said.

It was insane. The prisoners aboard _Purgatory_ might have known they had nowhere to go, but now that their cells were open, they sure as hell knew they didn't have to be prisoners anymore. Across the room Garrus could see half a dozen alliances forming as prisoners joined together to swarm the common enemy. Biotics were tearing off the railing. Utensils had been repurposed as knives. Those that were evolved for it were just tearing into the armed guards with teeth and claws. When the guards went down, the alliances instantly shattered, as all the prisoners tried to be the first to grab the gun and establish dominance, and the scenes collapsed into a gory mess of blood and broken bone. Over all of it, the alarms blared with ever-increasing urgency, clashing inharmoniously with the shouts and cries of the dying and the damned, and the smell of blood was mingled with a growing scent of smoke and molten metal.

"Sectors Seven, Nine, and Eleven have lost life support. No survivors," the computer said calmly. _Good to know,_ Garrus thought grimly.

Jack was nowhere to be seen, but it was plain as day where she had gone. The trail of blood and wrecked infrastructure was at least a meter wide, and again, when she'd left, she'd bypassed the security door by just tearing into the wall. Another ugly bulkhead breach leered at them from across the cell block, nearly ninety impossible meters away.

"One girl did all this?" Zaeed muttered. He'd forgotten he was on the comms.

"This Jack is powerful, but she lacks subtlety," Garrus replied.

"Oh, because you're so subtle yourself," Shepard whispered. She was already fading away, moving right, so Garrus moved left. Taylor didn't surprise him when he elected to head right down the center, with Massani on his flank. _Those two will charge the enemy every time_. _A simple tactic, not the most elegant solution, but hey, overpower the enemy with overwhelming force is the first thing they teach you in basic, and these guys certainly have the muscle to pull it off._

Of course, going up the middle, some prisoners caught sight of Taylor and Massani right away. These ones had held back—either cowards or smarter than the rest of them, but once they'd seen a couple of armed men that weren't in the Blue Suns uniform, they thought they'd spotted an advantage. A gaunt, dirty human yelled some sort of challenge or gang battle call, and his buddies rallied behind him to mob Taylor and Massani.

Warden Kuril's voice crackled over the speakers, edged with panic, "All prisoners, return to your cells immediately, or I'll open every airlock on this ship!"

 _Right. Because that will work. You don't have to be a genius to see this ship is going down, and you don't have to be a murderer to think it's better to die in a fight than to be fried in a prison cell. Can't blame the prisoners—for that, anyway._

Garrus targeted one of the prisoners rushing Taylor, but the others had it well under control.

Zaeed shot two of them so full of bullets they were still dancing as they hit seconds after they were dead. Jacob tossed the third guy back over their heads, screaming right into the warm embrace of a couple of Suns guards. They obligingly finished the guy off, but Taylor had caught their attention.

Garrus saw one of them say something to the other, and he looked across the room at the door. Garrus followed his gaze. _Oh, crap._ "Incoming heavy mech!" he shouted. He fired off a shot and one of the guards targeting Massani and Taylor went down, then took cover behind another riot barricade just as the heavy artillery started up.

Almost at the same time, Garrus saw the other guy go down, blood spurting from the ragged new hole in the back of his skull. Shepard's tactical cloak blinked out, and she somersaulted across the catwalk into cover on the bridge exactly opposite from the door. "Cover me!" she shouted, bringing up the new missile launcher. _Thank you, Professor_.

Taylor and Massani started to move up to the sides of the room, trying to get to the bridge, but they were beneath Shepard now, in the thick of the remaining prisoners. "Not you," Garrus yelled at them, "I've got her—clear the way to the breach!"

He saw Taylor nod, but he was already scanning the room. He kicked the guard coming up on his flank, hard in the spur. He felt it give, saw the armor bend and heard the snap. The guard went down screaming, and Garrus shot him in the face. There was another guard, slightly ahead of him, targeting Shepard on the bridge. Garrus took aim again, and fired. The visor of his helmet shattered inward, and if the bullet didn't kill him, Garrus knew the bone fragments from his broken nose or the glass through his eyes certainly would.

With the entrance of the YMIR mech, any brief advantage the prisoners had had at the outset of the riot had vanished. _These prisoners are violent, vicious terrorists, anarchists, rapists, arsonists, and serial killers—psychotic scum, but these guards have them outgunned. And whatever else you can say about the Blue Suns, they're professionals. They were prepared for this._ The prisoners were obliterated by rockets, their clothing melted into their flesh and their limbs blasted meters away from their bodies in seconds. They were shredded by the rain of bullets it could shoot from both claw-like arm cannons. This was a mech Shepard hadn't had the advantage of hacking before the battle.

The guards were starting to rally, heartened by their tech support. They'd been fighting solo, or in pairs, but now they started moving as a unit, focusing their energies to shoot the remaining prisoners and address Shepard's now clearly-visible line, halfway across the room to the breach, and regain control of the situation.

Shepard, crouched in cover on the bridge, focused her fire on the YMIR mech and ignored them. As the only one of them with heavy weapons, it was her job to take it out. She was counting on Garrus and the others to take the guards.

The M-77 missiles whistled as they flew through the air, changing course to target the mech as it slowly moved right, sweeping the room with its fire. Thanks to Shepard's fire and the mech's, the temperature in the block had risen nearly five degrees in the last ten seconds. _Though that might be the ship's core—going critical._

Garrus flicked his wrist and saw his program sizzle on the mech's shields, then shot a guard across the room on the mech's flank as Massani and Taylor made for a trio of guards near the breach.

Shepard was grimacing, gritting her teeth. The mech was fifteen meters away from her now, focused on her as the biggest threat in the room. Garrus's mandibles contracted. He knocked the commando that had just come in the opposite door back on his ass, frying his shields, and ejected another heat sink. _Shepard, don't be stupid. We're annihilating the Suns—cloak and fall back, and we'll regroup to take out the mech—_

Just then he saw the tell-tale blue flicker that was the mech's shields failing, and his stomach swooped. The mech staggered. Its optics blinked.

"Shep—"

She'd already jumped back as the mech exploded in a shower of shrapnel and oil, in accordance with the standard YMIR hostile destruction defensive programming. She grinned as she came up on his flank, swinging her missile launcher back over her shoulder and re-equipping her sniper. "Didn't worry you, did I?" she panted.

Garrus swore his responding grin was automatic. "Never," he replied.

She laughed. "Well, that's good. _I_ was worried."

Retargeting in an instant, she fired off a shot at the commando that had just climbed to his feet again. The bullet exited out the back of his head and embedded itself in the wall. Almost simultaneously, Massani and Taylor finished off the last guard to his left.

They fell back into formation at Shepard's flank, and the four of them made for the breach. Garrus took up the rear, looking back at the room so he could catch any prisoners or guards who might have stayed back during the slaughter, but there was no one. Not three minutes ago, the noise in the cell block had been deafening. Now the only sound was the echoing alarms, dying gunfire from other wards, and a growing crackle that meant somewhere, a fire was growing.

As if to confirm his dark suspicions, the ship's computer came over the speaker again. "Warning: power line damage has led to overload. Core systems failure imminent."

Garrus's stomach twisted, and the brief moment of joy he'd felt fighting at Shepard's six again evaporated at once. _There is nothing in the galaxy like fighting beside your friend at the world's end, torching the bad guys and laughing at the dark, right until you remember that the world is ending and you're burning your way out._

Shepard echoed his thoughts. "We have to get out of here," she said. She nodded at a guard by the breach. This was one they hadn't killed. Garrus swallowed. His mandible and part of his fringe had been pried completely off. A makeshift shiv had broken off in his armor plating, but that wasn't what had killed him. His face was a mess of broken teeth and viscera. The murder weapon lay useless half a meter away, in the hands of a prisoner that had obviously been one of the first hit by the YMIR mech. "He was swarmed by prisoners with improvised weapons," she said. "He never had a chance." Her expression was clinical, though, and Garrus saw her omni-tool flash as she took a scan of the scene and the gun. _Mordin will be proud. So would Pallin, actually—always a good idea to document new tech._

Garrus just felt sick. The prisoners here hadn't just killed the guard. They'd ripped him apart with their bare hands, out of sheer cruelty. "Shows you what kind of people these prisoners are. I don't agree with everything they do here, but it's in the galaxy's best interests. This guard kept maniacs away from innocent people."

Shepard glanced back at him for a moment. In her eyes there were equal parts judgment and guilt, but Garrus was the first one to drop his gaze. _Or maybe he was more concerned about the credits he could make selling these people off. We'll never know now. He's dead. It's so much easier when we can say exactly who the enemy is and who's the victim. But life doesn't work that way. And gang members or prisoners, Shepard's going to carry them all on her back. All of_ Purgatory _, in the hopes that one murdering criminal will help us save every human in the Terminus._

They moved on in silence through the next maintenance area, in between the breach Jack had torn in the bulkhead and the next ward. Warden Kuril came over the speaker again to inform the guards they'd achieved lockdown in three of the blocks. As they passed through the maintenance corridor, Garrus noticed that again, there didn't seem to be a breach on the other side—just the door. _Huh. Doors must only be secured on the one side back here,_ Garrus thought. _Have to have a pass to get from the block to the maintenance area, but they assume anyone already back here is cleared for the wards._ Shepard made for the door, and that's when Garrus noticed that though Jack had obviously come this way, there was no blood on the walls, no bodies on the floor—the guards had already cleared out. And other than the alarms, there was no sound emanating from the other side of the door. No shouts. No gunfire. _I've got a bad feeling about this…_

The door opened.

"Wait!" Garrus yelled.

Too late.

The second they entered the next ward, half a dozen guns swung their way. "Find cover!" Shepard shouted, as everyone's shields took a hit. Garrus dodged behind a water tank. Massani and Shepard hit the floor behind a riot barricade, and Taylor hurled himself off the catwalk to get down into the empty hold, where the shooting angle was too difficult for the guards across the way, but he had plenty of room to move. Garrus started his visor on calculating the number of hostiles—all the prisoners had already been taken care of, here—the guards had laid this ambush specifically for them, or for Jack, still on the rampage. _Eight, maybe ten_ , _and—_

Fire exploded off the side of the metallic water tank, and heat sizzled in the air. Garrus's stomach dropped and roiled. The side of his face flared up with remembered pain, and he tasted fear, bitter and electric in his mouth. The deafening drilling noise of YMIR cannons started up again.

Not _Tarak in the gunship, and this tank was built to take a hell of a lot more than your sofa. Pull it together, Vakarian._

But Shepard was looking at him, too, as she swung down the missile launcher again, jaw set in a grim line. Garrus nodded at her, pushed his hand, palm down, toward the ground and moved it in a horizontal arc.

 _I'm fine. Just take it out._

Shepard gave him a thumbs up, and Garrus called up his omni-tool, configured the firing solution, and shot an overload program around the corner at the mech. "Light 'em up!"

Shepard's omni-tool flashed, too—the mech was too close, and they were boxed in here. Instead of drawing its fire so he and the others could take out the guards, Shepard wanted to take it out in a hurry so they could regain mobility.

The computer spoke up again. "The hull has been breached in sectors Twelve, Fourteen, and Thirty. No survivors." _And so we can get out of here._

Garrus saw Zaeed with his assault rifle raised, firing at the guards that were outside of his view just now. Shepard faded out, and seconds later, Garrus heard the burr of her Locust start up. His visor lit up, telling him she was deploying electrical ammunition, still working on the mech's shields. Then the outline through the tank that was the YMIR's silhouette started flashing, and he heard the synthesized bass grate out, "Primary defenses offline."

She'd done it.

"Now!" he yelled. "Focus fire on the mech!"

He dodged out of cover, rifle already aimed at the YMIR's central processor. Taylor fired off six pistol rounds with him as Massani's bullets pockmarked the mech's chassis.

The head of a guard near the mech snapped around, and he yelled, "Fuu—"Then Shepard's missile hit, the mech exploded, and machine and man were blown to bits and pieces.

"Damn it! You see that? Get back up!" a human near the door screamed.

A turian charged down the ramp from the catwalk toward Jacob. "Blue Suns!" But it was their game now. Jacob lowered his head and let the man run right into his armored shoulder, letting his momentum take him with the biotics right into the face of the guard bearing down on Zaeed. Garrus left the tank, moving relentlessly up the catwalk across the room from cover to cover. His every shot landed. He knocked out shields with concussive rounds and his omni-tool and let Massani do the clean-up, while Shepard?

Shepard _danced_. She was everywhere they needed her most and the enemy wanted her least. Just like old times, she knew before any of them had to say anything. She took down what shields Garrus didn't. Taylor's blue biotic fields turned purple as she lit up the helpless guards suspended inside with her incendiary tech.

In less than thirty seconds, they'd cleared the room. But now capacitors were sparking. Garrus actually saw the fire in a damaged vent. This time, Shepard didn't need to tell them to run. She gestured at the breach Jack had left, and they ran out through it. Somewhere in the last few minutes, they'd turned around, and Garrus realized they were heading back toward the hangar now. _Maybe she's a reckless psycho, but she read the situation the second she thawed, didn't she? Knew someone had to be here for her—they wouldn't have let her out otherwise, so she started carving a path straight through to the place they'd brought her in to steal our ship._

Taylor got it, too. "She's heading for the _Normandy_ ," he said. "If we're not there when she arrives she'll tear the ship apart—if her heart hasn't burst from the effort yet."

"Keep moving," was Shepard's only reply.

Kuril was eager to find Jack, too. They heard him yelling at the guards to find her as they passed into the next area. The panic was raw in his voice by now. Even the humans heard it. The ship was getting more dangerous by the second. Sparking wires fell from the ceiling. Smoke was filling the halls. The ship moaned and creaked as they ran, protesting their hurried feet in its agonized interior. Just before they came to the door out into the next ward, a rafter collapsed. It hurtled toward Taylor's head. Without thinking, Garrus raised his rifle, flipped the interface on the side, and fired. The concussive shot blasted the rafter clear, and it fell, melted and twisted, to the side.

Jacob's biotics flared in panic. He froze for half a second, staring at the fallen rafter. He settled, and turned slowly. ". . . Thanks, Garrus."

"Any time," Garrus answered.

"All guards to Cell Block One," Kuril ordered over the speakers.

Shepard gestured at the door with her gun. "What do you want to bet that's Cell Block One?" she asked drily.

Garrus looked at her. "I wouldn't want to pin my life savings on it," he said in the same tone. "The odds are so good, returns would have to be terrible." Shepard let out a huff of surprised laughter, pleased.

"Bring it on," Massani sneered.

Shepard refocused. "Be ready," she told them.

"Aye aye," Taylor said.

Shepard stepped forward. The door opened, shrieking. The four of them ran out. Shepard ducked behind the riot barricade just in time, as the crack of a sniper blast actually set the hair on the top of her head waving, regardless of the gel holding it tightly in place. Garrus's gizzard clenched, but she'd made it with the rest of them.

Kuril's familiar voice rang out over the ward. He had to shout to be heard over the alarms in here. An electrical fire at least a meter square was raging, unheeded and unrestrained, in the corner to their left. "You're valuable, Shepard! I could have sold you and lived like a king!" he informed her. He cracked off another shot. It discharged harmlessly against the barricade with a metallic _ping_. "But you're too much trouble! At least I can still recapture Jack!"

Shepard had her Locust in hand. "Not a chance!" she shouted back. "You're a two-bit slave trader, and I don't have time for it!"

"I do the hard things civil governments are unwilling to!" Kuril retorted, furious. "This is for the good of the galaxy!"

But Shepard was done talking. Her omni-tool flashed, and a guard across the room yelped as his shield fritzed out. Garrus took him out in one shot. _And thank you for volunteering._ Taking advantage of the temporary shield boost she'd stolen off the guard, Shepard stood and fired in Kuril's direction, but her bullets stopped at least a meter away from him and fell to the ground, and a blue mass effect barrier flared up in relief—Kuril had repurposed _Purgatory_ 's barrier engines to protect the platform he stood on. _He can fire out, but no one can fire in._

Shepard recovered from her surprise in a second and sank back into cover. "Where?" she called.

"One right there," Massani growled, pointing straight ahead at one of the pylons powering Kuril's shield.

"I see the others," Garrus reported. "One by the exit, and the other on the opposite wall—by the fire. Hurry!"

"I'll handle it. Keep them off me!" she ordered.

"You got it!"

Garrus cased the room. Kuril had the best position—on the platform he had the high ground, and he had his back to the wall on two sides, but once Shepard took out the shields he'd be relatively vulnerable. "Stay in cover," he told Taylor and Massani. "Don't let him get a clear shot!"

There were two main groups of hostiles—a group of five on the area where they were, and up a ramp to their right, several more guarding the path up to Kuril's position—when the shields did come down, they'd have to take him out from a distance. And up the ramp, the exit door panel glowed green. _Unsecured, which means Kuril's not worried about us escaping. He's got reinforcements coming from that way._

"Someone has to cover the exit," he warned. "There are more coming!"

"I'm on it," Massani grunted, shifting position to make for the door. One of the Suns in their way went down to his assault rifle, his scream cut off as his throat was shot out.

Garrus couldn't see Shepard anymore, but he heard the distinctive sound of her Locust, and he saw the spark and the crash as the first pylon, the one behind the guards immediately in their way, went down. Up above, Garrus saw the flicker around Kuril as his shield weakened. Garrus flicked his wrist, and another guard's shield went down. They'd been fighting together long enough that Taylor saw it. The guard yelled as Taylor's biotics lifted him off his feet and sent him hurtling through the air. His face hit the wall behind Garrus with an audible crunch.

The three remaining guards immediately focused on Taylor, but Garrus had already pulled out his assault rifle and charged down the ramp to join him, as Massani tried to clear the ramp up to the exit to get into position by the door alone.

One of the guard's heads exploded from behind, and Garrus saw Shepard blink back in, halfway up the ramp to the second pylon. She turned to face her objective again. Garrus clubbed his guard with his assault rifle, using close quarters both to make it more difficult for Kuril to get a clean shot and to throw the immediate enemy off balance. Behind him, he heard Taylor doing the same, and heard the snap of breaking bones and the blat of the human's shotgun that meant he'd won the fight. Garrus sent a round into his own opponent and left him on the ground, and he and Taylor turned to back up Massani.

The old mercenary was already halfway up the ramp, laughing and shouting abuse again, assault rifle roaring. Kuril's shield flickered again—Shepard had taken the second pylon.

"Ignore them!" Kuril screamed. "Find Shepard! Kill Shepard!"

 _Easier said than done, though, isn't it?_ Garrus thought with satisfaction, as he and the other two men made it up the ramp and into cover. Kuril had been setting up the area for a while—not only had he reconfigured the mass effect engines, but he'd moved supply storage crates to give his guards more cover. The only problem was that, like the riot barricades they'd used throughout the ship, the defenses they'd set up to protect themselves worked against them just as well. Massani took up position by the door—while the position was ideal for keeping anyone from coming down the corridor and catching them in a pincer movement, it left him relatively exposed to the rest of the room, so Garrus moved up to defend him while Taylor kept right down the middle. He'd switched to his pistol for the range, and was bringing hell down on the guards still between them and Kuril. A commando screamed as Taylor shot his pistol right out of his fist. His bloody fingers fell to the floor with the gun, and while he was staring at them, Garrus took his eye, and his brain with it. Behind him, he heard the door whoosh open, and Zaeed's assault rifle going off.

"I don't think so, you bastards!"

Just ahead of Garrus and to his right, the last shield pylon went up in a shower of sparks. Kuril's shield sputtered and died. Not too far from his left foot, a red hot heat sink hit the metal floor with a hiss. Garrus turned his head and saw Shepard, not two meters to his left, cradling her Mantis, with her back to a stack of crates. She glanced back at him, and one corner of her mouth lifted just so.

"Let's end this."

Garrus grinned. "You got it, Commander." _No place better than this._

In another forty seconds the room was clear. Kuril's corpse was a charred, smoking ruin on its pedestal, face ravaged beyond recognition. And the four of them were pelting down the hall Massani had cleared toward the _Normandy_ and Jack.

* * *

 **A/N: This story is set in the same universe as my Disaster Zone series, and progresses concurrently with Part Five of that series,** _ **Resurrection**_ **.** **This chapter and the six after it take place between Chapter Two of** _ **Resurrection**_ **, "Trust," and Chapter Three, "On Horizon."**

 **Pay attention to the details as you read this. With a character like Garrus, they're everything. His knowledge of Alliance hand signals may just be insight into an untold story in ME. The fact he uses them to try to communicate with Jacob and Zaeed is a little more than that. What Garrus does, says, and _doesn't_ say is all important, in various ways. In this chapter, it's all about how Garrus acts and reacts in battle situations. He may not even completely be aware of all the ways that's changed since Omega, but I can guarantee you Shepard's noticing**— **and although they might not be able to verbalize what's going on here, the other squadmates react to it, too. That isn't to say that _none_ of the squadmates will verbalize what's going on here. More on that in the next chapter. :) **

**Best Always,**

 **LMS**


	4. Purgatory: The Mountain

**Purgatory: In Dante's** _ **Divine Comedy**_ **, Purgatory is represented as a mountain that penitent sinners must climb, enduring temporary suffering that, with prayer and contemplation, purifies them for Heaven.**

* * *

IV

Purgatory: The Climb

Electrical fires were raging all over the ship, but the temperature was still going down. The decks of _Purgatory_ shuddered and bucked as the vacuum of space tore at the breaches in its hull. _This place has minutes, and that's if we're generous,_ Garrus thought, as they raced toward the _Normandy_. The corridors, once full of gunfire and shouting, were now only filled with the alarms that echoed in the silence of the dead. Inmates and guards were almost all down—either killed in the riots they'd started when they'd released the prisoners, or casualties of the hull breaches Jack had made and the damage she'd done to the life support systems after they'd let her loose.

Shepard ran ahead of the party, face grim. There was something in the set of her jaw, the tension in her shoulders that went beyond the weight of the responsibility for what they'd done here. _She should've been turian, but this is more than guilt._ Garrus looked around, and then he saw it. _Damn. It's the_ Normandy _. The_ SR-1 _._ "Okay?" he asked in a low voice.

Massani ignored it, but Taylor looked over, curious. Shepard's jaw twitched. "No," she panted. "Leave it."

Garrus nodded, and they kept running.

"Stop!" someone yelled from down the hall. Garrus looked for the threat, but the guard wasn't yelling at them. He heard the sound of biotics tearing through flesh, boots on the ground. Then they stopped.

"Cerberus!" A human female, furious, feral. She howled in rage, like some wild creature, straining on a chain. They'd caught up to Jack. _And there's more to this story than that dossier told us._

They rounded the corner and saw Jack, alight with biotics, staring out the observation window at the _Normandy_ in dock, fists clenched. She kicked the bulkhead, pounded the glass, so lost in her anger she missed the guard at the other end of the corridor, taking aim.

Garrus raised his rifle, but Shepard had already fired. The guard's visor busted in, and he fell with a single cry. His body hit the ground and was still, and Jack rounded on them, fists glowing.

All of them kept their weapons on her, waiting, but she didn't attack. _Score one for saving her life, at least._ Her eyes blazed. "What the hell do you want?" she demanded.

Shepard jerked her gun a couple centimeters to the right, gesturing at the ship, indicating the alarms, the fires, the creaking bulkheads. "Look around. This ship's coming apart. I can help you," she said.

Jack scoffed, and her upper lip curled in contempt. "Shit, you sound like a pussy." Her biotics died down, but she jabbed a finger in Shepard's direction. "I'm not going anywhere with you," she declared. "You're Cerberus."

"Why does it matter if I'm with Cerberus?" Shepard asked sharply. _She sees this girl has a history with them, too, and she's not happy about it. They should've told us._

Jack waved a hand in the air. "They've been on my ass for years. Anytime I get free, they put a huge bounty on me. That's why Warden Kuril figured he'd struck gold when he caught me." She looked around and smirked in satisfaction. "It isn't working out too well for him."

Shepard's lips thinned and her eyes hardened. _That pride in this destruction? Even though she knows we did as much or more than Jack to bring this place down, Jack couldn't have struck a worse first note here, but I don't know what else Shepard expected._ But Shepard pushed past it, and said, "Forget what Cerberus wants with you. I'm Commander Shepard, and I want your help."

Jack gestured at the logo on the _Normandy_. "You show up in a Cerberus frigate to take me away somewhere? You think I'm stupid?"

Shepard gave a single, angry bark of a laugh, but she holstered her gun. Garrus, Massani, and Taylor kept theirs out. "I don't know," Shepard said. "You're turning down your one chance off this wreck. That seem smart to you? You have my word: I don't want to hurt you. I'm asking for your help."

"Could just knock her out, Commander," Jacob suggested.

"I'd like to see you try!" Jack cried. Her biotics flared, and Garrus cocked his gun. Jack's gaze swung over to him, and their eyes met. _You're good, but how long have you been going? How much do you have left? Whatever it is, there's no way you take me out before this bullet's in your skull._

Shepard raised her hand. "We're not going to attack her," she said. She phrased it like a statement, but it was an order.

"Good move," Jack sneered, but Garrus didn't lower his rifle until she let her biotics die down again, and even as she addressed Shepard again, he saw her watching him. "Look, you want me to come with you? Make it worth my while," she said.

Shepard shrugged. "Join my team, and I'll do what I can for you," she said.

 _Watch it, Shepard. You don't know what she wants._

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Jack snarled. Shepard gazed back at her, arms folded. Garrus could almost hear her say it. _Well?_

And when Jack spoke, she surprised him with her conditions. "I bet your ship's got lots of Cerberus databases," she said. "I want to look at those files, see what Cerberus has got on me. You want me on your team? Let me go through those databases."

Garrus could swear he saw the corner of Shepard's mouth twitch. "Done. You'll have full access," she said.

"You better be straight up with me," Jack warned.

Shepard simply raised an eyebrow. Jack regarded her for a moment, then nodded. "So why the hell are we standing here?" she demanded, waving at the ship.

Shepard jerked her head. "Move out," she said.

They made for the ship. As they passed through the airlock, Shepard said, "Welcome to the _Normandy_ , Jack. This is Garrus Vakarian, Zaeed Massani, and Jacob Taylor—also part of the team. If you'll come with me, I'll get you briefed. Jeff?"

Joker's voice came over the com. "What took so long? I give it two minutes before this place breaks completely apart!"

"So why don't you get us out of here?"

"I'm on it. D'you at least get our new crewmate, or did that go as well as most of our missions?"

Garrus felt the engines fire as the _Normandy_ detached from the wreckage of the Purgatory and began to move away. Beside him, Jack laughed unpleasantly. "This how things usually go for you, Shepard? This ought to be fun."

"Uh . . . who's that?" Joker asked.

"Jeff? Jack. Jack? Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau. Everyone usually calls him Joker. Jeff, you can meet our new friend later."

"Or he and everyone else could leave me the hell alone," Jack suggested. "I'm not here to be buddies." She jerked her arm out at the CIC. "So? Tell me who I'm killing and get me my files."

"Nice," Joker muttered. The speaker clicked as he signed off.

Shepard grimaced. "Taylor, Massani, Vakarian? You're dismissed. Good work today. Hit the showers, and get some food. I'll catch up with you later. With me, Jack."

She and Jack took off toward the briefing room. Taylor studied Shepard's back for several seconds. Massani, watching him, gave a single guffaw. "If Shepard catches you staring like that, Taylor, she's liable to knock your eyeballs right out of your head. You know that, right?"

"What?" Taylor tore his gaze away. "No—it's just, she didn't de-equip. She's still got her guns."

Massani laughed again. "Right." Garrus fought off a surge of completely irrational annoyance. _Great. Another one. First Alenko and T'Soni, now him. You'd think the half-naked human female would be more distracting, but no. Maybe the tattoos turn off humans. I mean, the number_ she's _got makes even me dizzy, but still—I guess it's Shepard, every time. I guess I don't blame the guy. If Shepard were turian—well. Best not to go there._

"It's probably just as well the Commander is still armed," he said instead. "We'll have to watch that one."

"Agreed," Taylor said. "Well, you guys can come with me, anyway. Clean your weapons and store 'em before hitting the showers."

"Lead the way," Garrus gestured.

* * *

Sleep didn't come easy these days. Cerberus just didn't design their barracks with turians in mind. The bunks and sleeper pods in the crew quarters were all too short, and shaped wrong besides. The situation was a little better than it had been on the original _Normandy_ , where he'd bedded down in the hold in an Alliance away-mission sleeping bag. This go-around, they'd managed to requisition him an extra-long military cot that he kept in the corner of the battery, and a few extra pillows that were supposed to compensate for the human mattress. Of course they didn't. Garrus still woke up with lumps every morning. _If I ever rejoin the turian military, they're sure to wonder about my chiropractic bills._

Garrus could deal with an uncomfortable bed. In basic, and early on back on Omega, he'd slept on worse. But late at night, when there was nothing to do but sleep—that's when his healing scars bothered him most. That's when everything bothered him most. When the lights were out and it was silent in the battery except for the hum of the _Normandy's_ engines or the low, gentle rhythm of the main gun's calibration routines his mind wandered to Palaven, or worse, to Omega, in those last, horrible hours, and the stench of blood and all the things he could've done, should've seen. That's when he could feel Sidonis still out there, still breathing because the rest of them weren't, and the injustice of it itched far worse than his scars. It got under his skin and sat heavy on his lungs, blocking his air passages worse than all Omega's smog and smoke until he couldn't breathe.

A couple of times in the past week, he'd tried to power through it, staring at the ceiling for hours, praying for the peace to close his eyes.

 _But then, why would the spirits answer you? If they even exist._

Eventually, he always got up. Maybe he'd run through exercises in the battery, letting his muscles sink into the mindless routine of the combinations, redirecting all that nervous energy into physical activity until he was so fatigued there was nothing left of him to think with, and he collapsed on his cot until shift change in the morning.

Other times, he'd worked with his guns instead, both his own and the _Normandy_ 's. He'd build mods from scratch, disassemble his weapons again and again, rebuilding them in a dozen different ways.

Distracting himself in the battery was easier now that Shepard had approved the installation of the Thanix cannon. There was plenty to keep him busy until he was too tired to worry. Streamlining targeting. Reducing the power draw without affecting the punch. Increasing accuracy. There were a thousand calibrations he could run and programs he could write when sleep eluded him.

But the night after the _Purgatory_ mission, even the calibrations failed him. That night, he'd been working on the Thanix, but he was writing programs faster than the console could run them. Finally, the little red light that meant the computer was thinking stopped blinking at him, and Garrus could swear it _stared_ at him with an almost baleful expression. A message popped up on the console.

 **TASKED TO CAPACITY.**

"Oh, stop whining," Garrus muttered. He waited, but after two minutes, the Thanix was still running a task he'd written three hours ago, so he gave up and left the battery.

It was the graveyard shift on the _Normandy_ , when most of the humans onboard actually were sleeping. The lights were throughout the ship to conserve power. Up on the second deck Mordin would still be working in the lab. A couple navigators and Esabe, the relief pilot, would be holding down the deck and monitoring sensors and ladar, but down here it was silent.

Garrus walked over to the kitchen. He opened the cabinets where Gardiner kept the dextro rations, and pulled out the _ariita_ beans. Humans said the hot, spicy stimulant made from the beans was the turian equivalent of coffee, though Kaidan had told him coffee was a more bitter drink. At any rate, _ariita_ and coffee were brewed so similarly that Garrus had learned back then that he could basically just put the _ariita_ through a human coffee maker. Garrus fished the green-handled pot from the dish bay and put the beans in the left side of the coffee maker. After a moment of thought, Garrus did the same in the right side with human coffee beans. Whether it was the graveyard shift heading off to the crew quarters or the earliest risers of the early morning shift, there were bound to be a few humans looking for a cup of coffee in the next couple hours or so.

The mingled smells of brewing _ariita_ and coffee soon filled the air. The combination wasn't a bad scent, but it was a very strong one. _That'll wake a person up, guaranteed. And I guess that's half the point._

A sound in the corridor caught Garrus's attention. He tilted his head. For all he'd put on the extra pot of coffee, he hadn't really expected anyone else would be on deck for at least ninety minutes. Garrus crossed the deck, circled around the elevator, and saw his fellow nighttime prowler.

Garrus folded his arms. It was Jack, and one look at the situation told him she'd been waiting for this all day. She was up here, now, during the graveyard shift when almost everyone else on the ship was down. She hadn't taken the elevator, but had just come up the maintenance ladder from Engineering, thus avoiding the soft chime the elevator gave off every time it hit a new floor. Her face was illuminated by the orange light of her omni-tool, and it was displaying the map portion of the _Normandy_ 's emergency protocols file that Miranda forwarded to all new crewmembers.

Jack tiptoed away from him toward life support. She peered at the locked door.

"Good morning," Garrus said.

Jack lit up in an instant, whirling on him without even deactivating her omni-tool. Her eyes were wide and wild, like those of a hunted animal. She pulled her arm back, then identified him. "What the fuck are you doing here?" she snarled, lowering her fist, though dark energy still crackled and blazed around her.

"Funny. I was going to ask you the same question."

"What does it look like I'm doing, moron?" she snapped back at once. "If I'm gonna live here for the next who the hell knows how long, I want to know the layout of the place. Figure out where everything is."

"You could've done that earlier. I'm sure Shepard offered to give you the tour."

Jack's lip curled. "Sure. Your girl said she'd show me around. So did that bitch, the Cerberus cheerleader. I'm not crazy about crowds. Figured I'd wait 'til later. Better for me, more comfortable for all the assholes on this boat."

Garrus folded his arms. "Uh-huh," he said blandly. He jerked his head at the life support door. "You could do some damage with a biotic fist through the systems in there. Kick up some chaos. But it wouldn't work the way it did back on _Purgatory_."

The energy around Jack flared. Garrus smiled pleasantly at her. Her eyes narrowed.

He pointed at the ceiling. "I'm pretty sure the AI backs up most systems on the _Normandy_. She'd get backups going long before you could get off this deck." He smiled again. "As I'm sure you've already noticed, there's only the one ladder and the one elevator off. Now, I'm sure you could probably carve up most of the crew without too much trouble, but Kasumi, Miranda, and I are posted on this deck, too."

Jack sneered. "Please. You'd all be dead before you knew what'd hit you." But Garrus noticed that while she met his eyes defiantly, her biotics had died down, and her weight was on her back foot, leaning away. _She's not half as confident as she wants to sound._

Garrus let her see him noticing her body language, let her know that he knew she wasn't sure of herself here. Then he deliberately took a step back and turned away. "Want some coffee?"

She blinked, confused. Then she scoffed. "The fuck would a dinosaur know about making coffee? Probably poison the entire crew."

Garrus shrugged. "Suit yourself." He started walking back toward the mess, but before he'd rounded the corner he heard her heavy boots behind him.

"Ugh. At least I can see just how toxic you made that shit," she grumbled. "See if I should add some stuff to finish killing these Cerberus assholes."

She followed him into the mess, and he gestured at the med bay. "Now, if you really wanted to disable this ship, you'd want to head there," he told her. "Straight through the med bay to the AI core. Screw up the servers in there and all EDI's backups go, too. Of course, you'd still have to bypass the lock to get in, just like in life support." He made a show of regarding her. "You don't strike me as much of a hacker, and these doors aren't like the ones in _Purgatory_. They did their best, but that ship wasn't built to be a military vessel. This one was. You couldn't just carve up the walls like you did there." He paused at the kitchen counter. "AI core's farther from the exits, too," he added, as if he'd just thought of it.

He got down a coffee cup and poured Jack a cup of the human coffee. "How do you take it?" he asked her.

Jack snatched the cup from Garrus. "Just give it here."

Garrus nodded and reached up for another cup for his asiita. Jack threw back her coffee like a shot, quicker to prove herself tough than to protect herself. Watching her from the corner of his eye, Garrus could tell she regretted it—her face turned red and her muscles tensed with pain as the liquid burned her mouth. Garrus sipped his asiita more slowly and didn't comment.

Jack thrust out her chin and held his gaze boldly, but when she brought up the mug again she didn't take so much. She held the coffee in her mouth a moment, swallowed, and grunted, "The fuck a dinosaur learn to make coffee?"

The wording had changed just enough to make it clear that this time, Jack was giving him a compliment, albeit in her very gruff, hostile manner. Garrus raised his mug in a mockery of a toast. "Think the crew will survive?" he said drily.

Jack glowered. "You'd be lucky if your stupid coffee did poison them all, scales. Cerberus. You think anyone on this boat gives a damn about a turian? They're using you. Just like they're using me. Only difference is, in the end they won't care if you live or die. Me? They want me alive. You? You'd be better off if I _was_ looking to trash this ship and run." She bared her teeth and her eyes glinted. "They can put you through hells like you've never seen."

"Thanks for your concern," Garrus said. "Bu—"

"The fuck said anything about concern?" Jack snapped venomously. "I'd kill you myself if it got me anything. Maybe just if I felt like it," she added callously.

"I'll take that under advisement." Garrus told her.

Jack's brown eyes flickered with blue. "You really don't know when to shut the hell up, do you?" she growled quietly.

"I spent ten years in Citadel Security and two on Omega," Garrus said plainly. "I _know_ when someone's talking out their ass."

"A cop," Jack scoffed. "I knew there was something I didn't like about you."

Garrus gestured at her omni-tool. "And if you haven't done an extranet search on every one of the crew you've seen personally along with those emergency protocols, I never learned to read a perp."

Jack actually flinched. Garrus took another sip of his asiita. Then Jack slowly raised her mug to him, in the same ironic toast he'd given her earlier. "Fine. Yeah. Not that I could find much. Just on that salarian who walked out of the lab after the briefing—the one who never shuts up, your girl Shepard, and you."

"Find anything interesting?" Garrus asked politely.

Jack raised an eyebrow, but she played along. "You'd think that salarian was some kind of entertainer—was in a fucking Gilbert and Sullivan production and guest-starred on a kid's show a while back—except for all those awards he's got from the salarian government for fuck-what." She tilted her head at him, beginning to enjoy revealing just how much she'd learned, showing him just how much she wasn't taken in. Garrus knew the type. "Your girl Shepard's just the opposite of the salarian—her name's plastered all over the extranet as the definition of badass. First human Spectre. Fucking Savior of the Citadel and general Girl Scout Extraordinaire." Jack snorted. "Can't say I've seen it." Her eyes glittered as she looked at him over her coffee mug, baiting him. "Except the Girl Scout part."

"Take my word for it, then," Garrus said. "Doctor Chakwas and Jeff Moreau were with her, too, but I'm the only one on this ship that fought beside her when she brought down Saren Arterius and saved the Citadel from Sovereign and the geth."

"Yeah, I read about you, too," Jack sneered. "The C-Sec detective that wanted to play Spectre. Couldn't let shit alone—before or after Saren—were you surprised when it ended up all over your face?"

"Not really," Garrus smiled tightly.

Jack regarded him. Then, unexpectedly, she chuckled. "And here you are again right in the middle of it. Just because _she_ asked you to come. Don't guess you've been picking daisies wherever you disappeared to for the last two years, either." She jerked her head at his scar. "What the hell happened? You piss someone off enough they blew half your face off?"

"Something like that." Garrus answered. He turned around and started washing his mug out, but Jack sidled up next to him.

"Uh-uh. You don't get to stick your ugly, flat nose all up in my business then back off the second I return the favor, jackass," she said, amused now. She thrust her empty mug under his nose. "Since you're already doing the dishes."

Garrus took it from her. As he did, her fist suddenly ignited blue, centimeters from his face. Garrus didn't flinch. "Stop screwing around, would you? I need to see the bottom of the mug."

Jack's biotics died down immediately. She withdrew her arm and cackled. "You've got some guts, Garrus," she acknowledged, turning around and swinging up onto the counter to sit beside him. "I like it." She tilted her head and scrutinized him, her nose wrinkling as she did. "And you know what? The scars are kind of badass. I'd fuck you," she pronounced.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Garrus replied. He was almost certain this was another game, and secure in that confidence. "I make it a point not to liaise with psychotic convicts."

Jack snorted. "Shit, you're a dork. 'Liaise.' Where'd you dig that one up, the Hierarchy Academy? I guess when you go human, Girl Scout former Alliance is more your speed, huh? Or is it that she's blonde? Typical."

Garrus hadn't frozen with her biotic fist in his face. Now he paused. He turned off the water slowly and placed both mugs on the drying rack deliberately. "You're trying to find a weakness," he said. "Like life support, or the AI core. Not because you've decided to leave, because if you left, there's no way you could go through the files you want. You're smart enough to know that this isn't _Purgatory_. This isn't some gang or civilian settlement in the Terminus. You know you can't waste this place and everyone in it. _Maybe_ you could get out with the files. Maybe. But you know there'd be survivors. And you know the first thing we'd do before we went after you—and we would—would be to cut off your access to those files. And you want that access. You need it. So you're staying, and you'll work with us, at least for now, however much you hate it. But you need a back door out, and if you can't find a literal one, you're going to go for any kind of back door you can get."

He turned to face her. She was tense again, watching him intently. "Don't. Shepard and I are old friends, true. She's the commanding officer of this ship. But even if that weren't the extent of our relationship, we're the two best allies you've got here. I don't know what your history with Cerberus is, though I can promise you we'll find out, but _Shepard's_ not Cerberus. _I'm_ not Cerberus. _This mission_ isn't Cerberus. They're just funding us. We're out to stop the Collectors from abducting every human in the Terminus, and to find out and publish any connection they have to the Reapers. That's it. You've started to get an idea of just who you're dealing with. Shepard can help you. I can help you. But if you screw with us, or in any way try to jeopardize Shepard's standing with the crew. . ." he trailed off, and shrugged.

Jack held his gaze a moment. Then she chuckled darkly. "Guess I struck a nerve, huh?" She raised her chin. " _Commanding officer_. Hah. Back on _Purgatory_. She lowered her gun. She raised her hand. The other ones—Taylor and Massani. They lowered their weapons, too. You didn't. You waded out into this shit the second she called you, gonna get it all over your face again for sure—only turian on a boat full of Cerberus—but you sure as hell didn't do it just to take her orders." She slid off the counter and tipped him an obscene salute with her middle finger. "You think you're so smart, but I'll tell you what: the rest of the crew? They may be Cerberus assholes, but they're not stupid. Massani? He's been around. No way you'll fool the salarian for long. And Miranda's not just any Cerberus bitch. She's the Illusive Man's lapdog, and he only lets trained dogs sit there. I won't say a thing. But I won't have to."

Just then, the elevator chimed softly to signify someone coming down from the graveyard shift. Jack tilted her head. She smirked at Garrus. "You hear that? They're playing my song. Later, Garrus. Thanks for the coffee." She strolled away from the mess.

Garrus watched her go, more restless and disturbed than he'd been half an hour ago. He felt hot and itchy, embarrassed and angry. As a matter of fact, he felt almost precisely the way he'd felt as a first-year recruit to C-Sec, the first couple of times a suspect had gotten the better of him in interrogation, and Garrus found himself suddenly very conscious that no one—not him, not Shepard, not Kasumi—had swept the mess for bugs.

 _Rule One of Interrogation: Never give the suspect more than you get._

Garrus swore under his breath. He returned to the battery. One or two of his programs had finished running, but as Garrus looked down at the Thanix's readout, the numbers just looked like gibberish to him. A headache was building behind his temples. He slammed his hands down on the console and stalked across the room, sitting heavily on his cot.

The taunts about him and Shepard were crap, of course, and Garrus bet everything he had that Jack knew it, too. She was too observant, not like those antihuman bastards at C-Sec, after Saren, who hadn't been able to imagine anyone feeling legitimate respect for the soft little primates from Earth but had definitely noted their women's resemblance to the asari. She'd just been digging for any reaction she could get.

 _And you just gave it to her wrapped up like a Unification Day gift._

Why _had_ he reacted? Back in C-Sec, he'd been annoyed when his coworkers had made similar insinuations about him and Shepard, sure, but he'd known enough to laugh it off anyway. This time, he'd known he and Jack were testing one another, but he'd still fallen right into her trap. _Waded right into the shit, she'd say. Got it all over my face._

 _Why? Because when it comes to Shepard, you don't think in terms of smart and stupid anymore, C-Sec rules or the chain of command. The second she died it all stopped mattering. And since, you've compromised so much, fallen so far, you've got nothing left to lose. Just Shepard._

 _That's_ not _going to happen. Not again._

Now Shepard was back and he knew what it was to lose her, now that he'd lost everything he'd been and everything he'd had before and there was nothing that could possibly hold him back, everything was different. And maybe Jack didn't get that, get all of it, but she'd understood the essence of it instinctively, almost immediately, that he was ready to screw the rules, screw the chain of command, do anything, _anything_ to keep Shepard safe. And not for some noble reason, because she was such a gifted commander—although she was—or because she might be the only one in the galaxy that could stop the Reapers. For the simple and selfish reason that _he needed her_ safe.

The taunts about him and Shepard were crap, but they were a lot nearer the mark than they'd used to be, Garrus realized, and that was why he hadn't been able to laugh this time. _How much nearer?_ Before he knew it, he was thinking of Shepard's dangerous grin in the med bay, flashing back on his annoyance at Taylor when Massani had caught the armory officer staring at Shepard's ass by the airlock.

Garrus let himself fall hard on his side, glaring at the floor, as if that would make a difference to the fact he had to be up in another four hours and sleep looked farther away than ever.

 _Damn._

It would go away, Garrus knew. He was still working to catch up, to wrap his exhausted, grieving, screwed-up mind around everything that had happened. Back from the dead, if Shepard seemed like the angel they'd only ever called him, saving his ass, giving him a grace he'd never asked for or wanted and had certainly never deserved—well, it was just a matter of time before he came to grips with the crazy and got over whatever trauma-inspired, sad, little attachment he was feeling just now.

She was human, after all. It had to go away.

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **This story is set in the same universe as my Disaster Zone series, and progresses concurrently with Part Five of that series,** _ **Resurrection**_ **. This chapter and the five after it take place between Chapter Two of** _ **Resurrection**_ **, "Trust," and Chapter Three, "On Horizon."**

 **Also, I guess I am showing off a little with my titles and references, but as surprising as it is, my master's in English with an emphasis on literature only does me limited good out here in the real world. Gotta use it somewhere, right? Not all my chapter titles are laden with symbolic meaning, but some of them are. But here? I'm not going to tell you who the penitent sinner ascending the mountain of Purgatory is. You decide.**

 **I really like this chapter. There's a lot to say about it, but I'm going to let you decide for yourselves what you think.**

 **Questions, comments? Raging criticism or gushing praise? Leave a review! I'll get back to you,**

 **LMS**


	5. Contact: Complications

V

Contact: Complications

Serving on the _SR-2_ was a strange mix of familiar and disconcerting. All Garrus wanted to do was relax into the old rhythm: follow Shepard's orders like he had when he'd first joined up with her, when he was still so sure she was always right. Check over the guns. Shoot the breeze with the humans until they decided he actually wasn't out to kill them or steal all their military secrets. Forget Omega and Archangel, try to turn back time and be the turian he'd been two years ago, an idealistic, impatient, stupid kid without the blood of ten good men and hundreds of bad ones on his hands.

But he hadn't been that kid by the time he'd shot down Saren. The galaxy had already gotten a lot more complicated. Shepard down off the pedestal he'd had her on in the beginning was even better; it was even more amazing to look and see the things she'd accomplished. But _almost_ always right wasn't the same as _always_ right, and he couldn't count on Shepard-the-person to know all the answers like he'd thought Shepard-the-Spectre had. _There's no guarantees. No certainty. I must be getting old._

Those two years had happened— _Three, really_ —and Shepard wasn't willing to let him become that C-Sec consult again any more than he was capable of going back to that. Not only was he gunnery officer, he'd been out with her every time she'd gone groundside since Doc Chakwas had first cleared him for active duty. After Jack had called him out for his failure to follow orders when they'd picked her up on _Purgatory_ , he'd thought about holding back in the field. But he wasn't going to give less than everything he had to Shepard or compromise the safety of any of her team just because of what some of the new recruits might think. Cerberus called him the gunnery officer, but ever since Saren, Shepard's team had never fit into neat, military-approved little boxes. He remembered what Shepard had told him too, before and after Alchera. As much as his guilt wanted him to give up any responsibility for good, she needed him to keep it up.

Ops worked pretty much exactly the same as they had done on the _SR-1_ , despite Miranda's fuming about "wasted time and resources." Shepard knew better. Elite teams didn't just happen, even if they were made up of a bunch of elite individuals. They needed training, time to learn how to work together in real-life conditions before they had a chance to screw up their primary objective, when it actually mattered. So Shepard went through the systems around their objectives like a C-Sec cleaning crew, answering distress calls, taking out crime rings, and evaluating her new troops all at once. And as Shepard came to know her new crew, so did Garrus.

Still, they hadn't done much more than destroy a factory sending out defunct, hostile VIs and recover data from a crashed ship before they were set to recruit the next person on Shepard's list. Garrus wasn't sure how much better he felt about "Warlord Okeer" than he felt about Jack the convict.

Garrus didn't go by the armory before heading to the shuttle—he modded and maintained his own guns—so he didn't know Shepard had called Jack out again until he saw her come into the docking bay and she greeted him with her customary sneer. He smiled at her in return. _Not that a turian smile is very comforting to most humans, and mine's probably less comforting than most._ Doctor Chakwas said his scars were healing well. He still looked exactly like a rocket had hit his face. But the idea that he'd throw Jack off balance was somehow much less upsetting than the idea that he'd throw the average human on the street off balance.

"You again? Why am I not surprised?" Jack said.

"A pleasure as always, Jack," Garrus returned.

"Bite me!"

"Not unless you buy me dinner first. And then only if you ask me _very_ nicely," Garrus answered without missing a beat.

Jack stared at him, caught off guard, then she laughed once. "In your dreams."

"Everyone getting along down here?"

The elevator door hissed closed behind Shepard and Mordin. Jack rolled her eyes at Shepard. "Just peachy. Your boy here just asked me to elope. I told him he's not my type."

"A psychotic murderer with enough tattoos to make someone dizzy?" Garrus suggested.

"For a start," Jack said, flashing her teeth in vicious amusement.

"I'm heartbroken."

"I'm sure."

Shepard smiled and shook her head, arms folded. "As interesting as I'm sure your failed relationship would be, do you think we could get a move on? We might find a warlord more to Jack's taste." She gestured at the shuttle.

Jack shrugged. "An eight-foot-tall tough guy with a gun and a grudge against pricks like Vakarian? I can dig it."

"Without metal or strong alloy skeletal support, intercourse with krogan would likely crush you, Jack," Mordin pointed out. "Standard for some Alliance operatives. Also improves likelihood of survival in melee combat with krogan. Unlikely you have been outfitted with them. Could design brace system compatible with biotic energy—"

Jack's eyes glittered blue as she sat in the corner of the shuttle farthest from the door—with the most room to maneuver, if she needed it. "You come near me with a scalpel, Dr. Frankenstein, and I'll rip you to shreds."

Mordin seemed entirely unperturbed by Jack's death threat. "Simple 'no' will suffice. No need for violence."

"Yeah, whatever. Just stay away from me." Jack lapsed into sullen silence. Shepard sighed. She swung in and sat in her seat next to Garrus, across from Mordin.

"Take us down to Korlus, Niels," she called to the shuttle pilot. Outside, Garrus heard the roar of the wind as Niels signaled Joker and he dropped the ramp.

"You got it, Commander," Niels said.

Garrus felt the familiar lurching in his stomach right before the inertial dampeners kicked in to compensate. More to fill the suddenly tense silence than anything else, he nodded at Mordin across the way. "You coming down with us, professor?" Mordin's chief purpose on the _Normandy_ was to design defenses against Collector weapons. He hadn't ever gone down in the ground team before, but Garrus knew Solus had been in the STG—worked with Mierin and Erash, back in the day. He had to admit he was curious to see how the good doctor would handle himself, even as he tried to imagine how the team would operate in this particular configuration. _Who am I watching? Am I lead offense or support here?_

Mordin stared at him, unimpressed. "Obviously. Was not always professor, doctor. Should make nice break from laboratory, tests, research. Renew thinking for return, enable fresh perspective. Breakthrough."

"Having trouble in the lab, professor?" Shepard asked.

"No," Mordin said. "But quarian data, Freedom's Progress samples limited. Collector tech entirely different. Not based on any tech known to any Citadel species. Need to find mathematical basis, elemental composition, then synthesize defenses from same processes. Hope Cerberus data is accurate, and Okeer connected to Collectors. Still—krogan. Uncertain of value of any Collector research. Never met krogan scientist worthy of the name."

"Okeer might surprise you," Shepard suggested. "One thing I've learned knocking around out here is that the minute you start trying to categorically label any one species, about half a dozen individuals pop up out of the woodwork to prove you wrong."

"Perhaps," Mordin admitted. "Humans much more varied than most species, however."

"So you've said. You going to be okay with a krogan on the team?"

Mordin blinked. "Fine! Brute strength, powerful warriors necessary to our mission! Krogan most aggressive, renowned warriors in the galaxy! Defeated rachni! Besides—I am a professional, Shepard. Species grudges counterproductive to any successful interspecies objective. Uncertain krogan warlord will see it that way."

"So if he doesn't, I'll paste 'em to the wall," Jack suggested. "Problem solved."

"Generous of you," Shepard said, though Garrus saw the flicker of distaste in her eyes. "But I'm hoping that won't be necessary."

"Coming in, Commander," Niels said. "Intel says Okeer's in the compound a couple klicks out, but I'm seeing a lot of agents on the ground in between here and there. No way of knowing if they're friendlies."

"Go ahead and set us down," Shepard ordered. "If they're not, we'll deal with it on foot. Small talk's over, kids. Time to get our warlord."

"Good. I was getting bored anyway," Jack said.

The shuttle door opened. The unfiltered air of Korlus came in, and it smelled just like trash. Shepard jumped down first, rifle to her shoulder. She checked the sight lines. The place looked deserted from here, just piles of scrap metal and clouds of ozone in every direction. Klicks of junk stretched out in every direction. Korlus was perhaps the ugliest place Garrus had ever seen.

"Dossier doesn't say if Okeer is on this planet by choice," Shepard said. She'd switched over to what Garrus always thought of as her mission voice, clipped, curt, and completely focused on their objective. "Assume hostiles." She gestured right, signaling the lane of attack she would cover, and Garrus automatically moved to the left as Mordin and Jack went up center, where their shorter-range attacks would do the most damage if they came across any enemies.

An angry female human voice sounded. "There is only one measure of success: kill or be killed." Jack swung her shotgun around, but there was no one; just a small, brown-and-black box mounted on top a jagged, metal pole that stuck up like an exposed bone from the dirt.

"Loudspeakers? Someone likes the sound of their own voice . . ." Garrus said, amused.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shepard's lips twitch, but she only said, "Stay focused."

It wasn't a bad order— _kill or be killed_ was rather ominous. So was the silence. Inside the skycars and train cars and rusted building material all around was the detritus of the galaxy. This stuff had been brought to Korlus from dozens of different worlds, and they should have been able to hear the creatures that had been brought with it. Insects, spiders, the odd stowaway pyjak. But there was nothing. Just the acid breeze blowing through the dust. Hearing _nothing_ on a world like this always meant a nasty _something_ somewhere just out of sight.

They walked along the path Niels had outlined for them. There were other loudspeakers. "Being hired is merely the beginning," the angry woman said from another. "You must earn your place in the mighty army we are building."

Mordin, near the front, gestured at a raised platform, fortified with walls of metal scrap. "Lookout position," he warned. "Be ready for combat!"

The words had just left his mouth when the first shots were fired. The four of them instantly fanned out. Luckily, there was plenty of cover available. "I'll kill you all!" Jack screamed. The ground lit up with a wave of dark energy. It pulsed toward the enemy on the platform, conveniently knocking them off their feet. The movement as they fell painted their positions as clearly as if Jack had sent up a flare. Shepard and Garrus, behind different stacks of refuse, cracked out shots at almost the exact same time, and two different men went down.

"Clean hit!" Mordin said. Garrus didn't know who he was complimenting. A white, frightened, angry face poked out from the look-out position, though, and a fireball from Mordin's omni-tool took it right off. The merc went down screaming.

"Only one more," Garrus said, making use of his infrared filter to light up the heat signatures.

"He's mine," Jack snarled. Her fist glowed blue. "Fly, bitch." As the last, screaming merc in the path floated out of his cover, she plugged him with her shotgun, blowing a hole in his chest. Blood and bone showered down, and his limp body fell with a thud.

Shepard looked down at the body. "Blue Suns," she said, noting the armor. She looked at Garrus. "Think that's why they fired?"

EDI, tuned into their radios, interrupted. "I have been monitoring communications from Omega. No word has gone out with any warrant for Archangel—or for you, Commander. Omega's gangs are claiming Archangel was killed. It is likelier you that have disrupted a sensitive operation—perhaps one involving Okeer."

"Is that better or worse, I wonder?" Garrus mused.

"Shepard," Mordin called from up ahead.

Shepard walked on to see what the professor wanted. He was kneeling beside one of the mercs. His weapon had been blown away, and there was a gaping hole in his breastplate—but he was alive.

"Shit! Shit! Won't stop bleeding! I'm gonna . . . I'm gonna . . . son of a bitch!"

Garrus looked at his wound. The shot had obviously taken out his shields and punched through his armor, but it had penetrated through muscle mostly, it looked like. Maybe it had chipped a bone. Probably hurt like hell, but it wasn't gushing, either. He'd live. "Doesn't look that bad, actually," he murmured. "Getting sloppy, Commander?"

Shepard's eyes flashed. "Shut up," she muttered back. She stepped up to the man, who glared at her, even as he tried to scoot away. He hissed and gave it up as a bad job.

"I knew it wasn't berserkers! Not at range! You're Alliance," he snarled, focusing on the N7 insignia on Shepard's armor. Then, taking in Mordin, Garrus, and Jack's unconventional attire, he changed his mind. "Or mercs. I'm not . . . I'm not telling you anything!"

Shepard punched up her omni-tool. "I've got a nice application of medi-gel ready to go. But if you'd rather I just keep walking . . ." She shrugged and let it die, turned around like she was going to leave.

The man's eyes glistened with pain. "Son of a bi—I just—I don't know anything," he protested. "I just shoot the overflow from the labs. The old krogan up there? He's really been cleaning house lately. Jedore hired him to make her an army, but the krogan he creates are insane, so we use them for live ammo training. It's all crap. I don't get paid enough to goddamn bleed out."

Shepard, Mordin, and Garrus exchanged looks. It explained nicely why the mercs here had opened fire on them, at least. They were scared out of their minds, overrun with insane krogan. They probably fired at anything that moved. Disgust flickered over Shepard's features, but she didn't have time to make her standard dig about the ethics of the lady that was buying a krogan army and letting her people shoot the rejects, the mercs that were shooting them, or their contact that was selling his own people for slaughter, because the merc's radio buzzed, and a voice came over the com.

"Outpost Four? Jedore wants us to move. We need coordinates on that krogan attack."

 _That'd be us_ , Garrus realized. Shepard knelt down, pistol drawn, and showed it to the wounded man "I want your friends gone. Understand?" she murmured, too low to be heard over the radio.

The man's bright eyes crossed as he looked at the gun. He swallowed, but he pressed the com. "Uh . . . patrol? The last group . . . dispersed. I lost sight five minutes ago."

The merc on the radio sounded disappointed. "Dispersed? Jedore will be pissed. She wanted a show."

"You asked for a report, you got it!" their wounded man snapped. "Dispersed!"

"Understood. Returning to the labs."

"There. You see? I'm helping," the wounded man protested.

Shepard scoffed, but lowered her gun. "Have you seen Okeer? Does he know about all this?"

"We can't go in the labs," the merc explained. "But everyone sees what happens when the krogan come out. I've shot hundreds. They're crazy, mindless. Anyone up there, they know what's going on."

Shepard looked like he'd fed her something sour. Jack smirked. She eyed Garrus, as if to say, _See? No one working with Cerberus keeps their hands clean. Not such a Girl Scout now, is she?_ Garrus looked away. "Is Jedore's lab heavily guarded?" Shepard asked the merc.

"There are big guns to keep ships away," the merc said, frustrated. "We're not outfitted to fight goddamn commandos."

Shepard hesitated, then, glancing at Mordin, asked, "What is Jedore planning to do with all these krogan? If they weren't crazy?"

The merc snorted. "Replace us probably. I sure wouldn't want to see an army of them coming at me." He made a fist. "She can't control them. They aren't supposed to be crazy, but they're krogan. How smart are they to start?"

Shepard's mouth was a hard line, and her eyes were like a storm. "You'd be surprised." She pushed the man back against the scrap wall and stood. "If you start limping now, you might find a shady spot before you bleed out," she told him.

The merc staggered to his feet. "Shit! Ow! Shit! Ow!" Garrus watched him go. He wasn't worth leaving alive, but he really wasn't worth killing either.

"Adding insult to injury," the doctor observed. "Literally. Necessary?"

Jack's lips twitched. "No," she answered for Shepard. "But funny."

"I thought so," Shepard said. "He'll live. If he finds a way off this scrap heap, maybe next time he'll pick a better line of work."

"Or he won't," Garrus said.

Shepard looked at him. "Or he won't," she admitted. She lifted her sniper again. "He gave us good intel. But I've gotten rusty."

"I hear two years dead will do that to you," Jack said. "Let's _go_. Crazy krogan and asshole mercs? This could be fun."

"Fun," Shepard repeated, in a voice dry enough to dehydrate a hanar. "Right." But she took point, and they moved out.

If Garrus had chosen the battleground, he wouldn't have picked Korlus. The smell was bad enough, but the piles of trash everywhere—some of them with organic components or not-quite-defunct machines—confused his infrared scanner and hid the mercs, on edge and already primed to shoot anything that moved. It was hard not to feel like rodents in a maze as they moved through the artificial corridors toward the signal Jedore's labs must be giving off.

The ground sloped down, and Garrus saw someone had built a metal bridge over the landscape. _Vantage point._ He pivoted to face the threat as Jedore's loudspeakers blasted her motivational messages out to her men. "Hostiles!" he cried. "Stay sharp!"

Gunfire rained down from above. Garrus darted behind a pile of crushed skycars as a screaming merc flew overhead, caught up in Jack's biotics. The sharp retort of Mordin's pistol ricocheted off the metal all around. But the screaming stopped. Taking advantage of the distraction Jack's fireworks had to have caused, Garrus leaned out and took out a merc on the ground up ahead. The force of the shot carried him back half a meter, but when he hit, he wasn't breathing anymore.

Shepard's Locust purred, but right as the mercs refocused on the noise, they cried out in fear and confusion. "I've lost visual!"

Garrus couldn't help grinning. He ejected a heat sink and fired again, and while the other mercs were still looking at the place Shepard had vanished, one of them went down from a bullet fired from the completely opposite direction. Shepard flickered back into scope, already in cover and ready for action.

So it went. Shepard and Jack bounced the mercs' attention between them like a biotiball, competing with biotics, tech, and noise to be the loudest, showiest players in the junkyard. They sowed panic and confusion in the ranks of the enemy, and Mordin and Garrus were more than ready to take advantage. It wasn't Shepard's usual style at all—she'd adapted to the capabilities of this particular ground team with the intuition characteristic of the very best soldiers in the galaxy. Garrus might have actually laughed a few times as they pressed forward. Jack was just being Jack, but there was something beautiful about the way that Shepard let her be—and the way Shepard had shifted her style to be as deadly as possible in this setting.

On a whim, he cued up some of the old alt rock she'd used to like on his visor and patched it through to the rest of the team. "What the fuck?" Jack demanded. "We got our own theme music? Hell, yes!" She blasted a merc off the balcony.

"Unconventional," Mordin remarked. "Rhythm could increase predictability to the enemy. Could also synchronize our movements and increase effectiveness. Unsure. Could run study—"

"Study the other ground teams," Shepard ordered. "When you're in one, just shoot!"

"Of course," Mordin said. His omni-tool glowed, and a new program shot out toward the enemy. A batarian behind some rotted semi pallets froze solid, mouth open in shock and pain. _Cryo tech_. He'd unfreeze in a moment, annoyed, but unharmed except for some minor freeze burns. _Unless—_

Shepard beat him to it. Her own omni-tool flashed, and her own incendiary program arced out and exploded into the batarian's chest. The merc shattered into a hundred shards of bloody ice. Even Garrus winced, though he figured a headshot would've done about the same thing. But Jack whooped. "Nice!"

"The krogan are your example and your warning," Jedore intoned from the nearest loudspeaker. "As ferocious as they are, failures are expendable."

Shepard made a face. "Haven't even met her, and I hate that woman," she muttered. Her omni-tool came up again, and she typed a command out. Garrus's music blared out from the hacked speakers. Shepard sniffed. "That's better." She shot a glance at Garrus. "We'll talk about your dated playlist later." She paused. "Wait."

All of them stiffened, hearing the same thing Shepard heard. Shots were still being fired in the distance—but the mercs weren't firing on them anymore.

"It's the krogan," Shepard said. "Come on!"

She just about sprinted up ahead.

A single, armored krogan was trapped in a dead end ahead. Six mercs surrounded him—two on the ground off to the right, four up above. His armor was holding, but he was in bad trouble, without a lot of cover and with only a short-range weapon.

"Jack! Mordin!" Shepard rapped out, signaling to the right. She opened fire on the mercs on the catwalk up above with her Locust, drawing their fire and moving toward the cover where the two others crouched. Jack and Mordin got their orders. Jack hit the ground, sending a shockwave through the air to flush the mercs out of their foxhole. She punched a messy, gory hole through the torso of one at short range with her shotgun. Mordin got the other with a neat hole between the eyes. The four of them moved into the now-vacant cover, continuing to fire upon the four mercs up above. The krogan took out one, blowing his arm off. He screamed and fell over the railing behind him, out of sight. Garrus took out the shields of another with his omni-tool, leaving him open to Shepard's fire. The other two were down in seconds.

The gunfire stopped. The krogan turned to face them. Jack, Mordin, and Garrus all raised their weapons, remembering what the merc had told them about these krogan's sanity, but Shepard raised her hand. With a glance at Jack, Garrus brought his gun down with the others, though he kept his finger on the trigger.

It was hard, though. It went against every instinct he had to let the krogan approach her as close as he did, until his face was centimeters away from her breastplate. Shepard herself looked like she felt a bit awkward, but the krogan sniffed loudly, and stepped back.

"You . . . are different," he said in a halting, measured bass. "You . . . you don't smell like this world. Seven night cycles, and I have felt only the need to kill. But you . . . something makes me speak."

Garrus stared. "Night cycles," he said aloud. "Seven _days_." This experiment was only a week old. What the hell were they doing to these things?

Shepard's jaw set. "They must breed them full-size, ready to kill. Not much improvement over regular mercs if they need training."

"Bred to kill?" the krogan echoed, confused. "No. I kill because my blood and bone tell me to. But it's not why I was flushed from glass mother. Survival is what I hear in my head, against the enemy that threatens all my kind. But I failed even before waking. That is what the voice in the water said. That is why I wait here."

They all looked at one another, trying to make sense of what the krogan was telling them. "Okeer's voice?" Shepard guessed. "Did he speak to you while you were in your tank?"

The krogan hesitated. "I heard the voice. Not like now, with ears. Inside. I called it 'Father.' It liked that. But it was disappointed. I'm not what it needs me to be."

Mordin stroked his chin. "A breeding program. Trying to escape genophage effects?" he suggested. Garrus regarded the professor. He looked troubled. Something beyond the usual krogan-salarian rivalry.

"Escape?" the krogan said. "Escape was never whispered. Survive. Resist. Ignore."

Shepard looked at Garrus and Mordin. "I destroyed Saren's 'cure,'" she said flatly. "How does Okeer expect these krogan to ignore the genophage if not by curing it?"

Garrus looked back at her. Did he look like a scientist to her? "No idea."

"Likely irrelevant," Mordin said. "Appears Okeer has had no success."

Shepard pressed her lips together and turned back to the krogan. "How did you disappoint the voice?" she asked him.

"I don't know," the krogan said simply. "It was decided before I left tank-mother: I was not perfect."

Jack gestured to the krogan. "That merc said these guys go crazy."

But looking at Shepard and Mordin, Garrus figured they'd come to the same conclusion he had. This krogan, at least, didn't seem insane. _But he's not all there, either._ The krogan sort of hung his head. "I don't know of that. But I'm not perfect."

"How can you speak if you're only a week old?" Shepard demanded.

"There was a scratching sound in my head, and it became the voice. It taught things I would need: walking, talking, hitting, shooting. Then it said I was not perfect, and the teaching stopped. And now I am here."

Simple answer. Right to the point, Garrus thought. He could appreciate that kind of concision. "He was taught enough to be judged," he said.

Mordin seemed intrigued. "Interesting. Raised, then rejected. Control group? Field test?"

The krogan sighed, apparently weary of all these questions he couldn't answer. "I don't know, but I am not perfect."

"You're supposed to be part of a mercenary army," Shepard told him. "Do you remember Jedore?" Garrus glanced at her. He didn't know if reminding the giant krogan he was supposed to be part of a Blue Suns army that apparently had a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy where they were concerned was the right way to play this.

But the krogan didn't suddenly remember he wanted them dead. "I know that name," he agreed. "It causes anger . . . but also laughter. It is not a name that will be sung when we march. I don't know what that means, but I have heard it many times."

That was clear enough, Garrus thought. Jedore was paying Okeer to create a krogan army, then, but Okeer had his own agenda for the resources she was letting him use. He was judging the krogan he created by his own standard. Pretty smart, for a krogan. Not too ethical, but Garrus had known a grand total of two krogan that could be called ethical by any other species's definition—and one of them had sworn up and down he wasn't a krogan at all. He wondered what Krul and Mierin would make of this mess, and looked down at the ground as the sour taste of grief and guilt rose in his mouth again.

Shepard was just about done with Okeer's lab rat, though. "Show me the laboratory," she said. "I need to speak with Okeer."

At first the krogan didn't seem to know what she meant. "Uh . . . glass mother," he realized. He pointed up a hill. "She is up, past the broken parts, behind many of you fleshy things. I will show you."

He walked away then, and took hold of an enormous piece of scrap Garrus hadn't even realized was a barricade. It would take three, maybe four human or turian soldiers to move it. Eight salarians. But the krogan dug his claws into the metal, and it shrieked and bent. With a groan, he threw it aside.

"Brute strength. Key aspect of krogan," Mordin observed.

Garrus stared at the barricade. "Glad he's friendly."

"You fleshy things are slow when big things are in your way," the krogan remarked.

Shepard evaluated the krogan, thoughtful. "You could have run or tried to fight your way back to the labs," she told him. "Why stay here?"

"I am waiting," the krogan answered. "A voice told me, if they come, I fight. But I will not run, and I will not follow. I am not perfect, but I have purpose. I must wait until called, released."

He thought Okeer or someone else would come for him, pull him into an army for someone who deserved one. But if one thing was clear, it was that Okeer had totally written this guy off. It was a shame, Garrus thought, because he obviously had a brain and a personality. Didn't seem that bad for a krogan, though that might be because he'd only had a week in the world, or because he'd failed whatever test of perfection Okeer had wanted him to pass. But looking at him, Garrus knew that they couldn't talk this guy into leaving. Trying would just slow them down, even if he stayed relatively sane.

Shepard knew it too. She frowned, and hesitated, but eventually she turned away. "Thanks," she told the krogan. "Move out."

Shepard led the way through the barricade. Jack and Mordin followed her, and Garrus took up the rear guard. The trash through the gateway seemed more organized. The scrap had been shifted and built up into walls, bottlenecks Jedore's men could hold, force the krogan down. "Not a lot of room to maneuver," Garrus observed. "Stay sharp."

They heard the krogan before they saw them—and they sounded mad—roaring and firing in the distance. "Fuck," Jack muttered.

"Get ready," Shepard warned her. "Mordin, Jack, slow them down, keep them flying. Use tech and biotics, but stay out of range, and leave the shooting to me and Garrus. Got it?"

"Got it," Jack agreed, not even bothering with the badass posturing.

They were situated at the bottom of a hill—bad position, but the Suns had built up narrow walkways with long falls to force the krogan to predictable patterns of attack, never more than one or two at a time, and there was cover. At the top of a hill behind a wall of scrap, a mercenary went flying—minus a leg—and the first krogan came into view. He saw them and roared with challenge.

He gripped his gun in his short, beefy arms, lowered his head, and charged. And Mordin hit him with a cryogenic program that froze him solid. He fell end-over-end down the hill, and Shepard, grim-faced, fired. He shattered into pieces as his batch mates ran up behind him.

They'd seen what Mordin had done to their friend, and both barreled straight toward him. Mordin retreated, circling down the hill and around, and Jack let loose a shockwave. It knocked both krogan off their feet, Garrus took aim and fired. Orange blood spurted. Garrus dropped a heat sink and fired again, killing the first just as the second krogan was climbing to his feet. Shepard's Locust rang out, and the second krogan froze—she was using cryo rounds.

"Watch the hill!" she yelled, ducking into cover as another berserker came up from the halls beyond.

"On it!" Mordin told her.

It was a long, long dance of shoot-and-retreat, distracting the targets, employing biotics and tech to keep them at range. Finally, when the smell of krogan blood had just started to get the edge over the trash, and one or two scrap hurdles the mercs had set up were dented or melted, the krogan stopped coming. Jack was pale and sweating.

"Fuck," she gasped. "Fuck. I've never seen anything like that."

Garrus laughed once. He just bet. Jack was powerful, but she'd lived her life among gangs and opportunistic cutthroats. Professional merc organizations and krogan breeding programs gone bad had probably been a little above her paygrade. "Welcome to the team," he said, not without some irony. "Just like old times," he remarked to Shepard.

Shepard scoffed. "Maybe if you throw in a couple dozen geth and a Reaper." She paused. "On second thought, let's not," she decided. "You alright to move out?" she asked Jack.

Now Jack stiffened. She stuck out her chin. "Hell, yeah!" she retorted. "Plenty more where that came from."

Shepard stared her down. "When you say that to me, it better be the truth," she told Jack. "If you say you're good to go and you're not, that puts all of us at risk." She nodded at Mordin. "Professor?"

Mordin reached into his labcoat and brought out a couple of high-calorie energy bars. He handed them to Shepard, who tossed them to Jack. She caught them, eyes narrowed, but she peeled the wrappers off and started eating. Garrus tried not to smile.

Shepard jerked her head, and they moved out.

Most of the krogan were down, but the mercs all wanted to know what had gone down. Garrus thought they might have appreciated having the crazy krogan taken off their plates, but judging by the shouting they heard over the radio, their boss wasn't pleased. Soon they were in yet another firefight. Mercs were easy, though, compared to berserk krogan—and it wasn't too long before they found out they had help.

The first couple groups were coordinated, but after that it was like everything fell apart on the merc side. Attacks came at the wrong times. Their reinforcements didn't show up when called. Someone was scrambling communications.

"Warlord Okeer," Mordin hypothesized, making a beautiful headshot through a panicked engineer. "Knows we're coming?"

"Maybe," Shepard said. "We're not exactly being subtle, and it doesn't seem he's too loyal to his employer. But I can't figure why he'd want to help us kill Jedore's people."

"Okeer's got his own objective," Jack grunted.

"Krogan took down the grid," a mercenary shouted, as if to confirm their suspicions. "We're blind and getting hit on all sides! Where are the heavies?!"

They climbed higher and higher in the Suns' makeshift fortress. For a while, Jedore raged at her helpless mercenaries. Then, everything began to fell silent—mercenaries included.

"Have we killed 'em all, or is something else going on?" Jack wondered.

"We haven't run into Jedore, but I'm guessing she's onsite. No. They're putting something else together," Shepard said. "Stay alert."

After a while, Garrus noticed there were air filters whining in the background. The smell of trash lessened ever so slightly, but there were other smells around—corpses and antiseptic. As they passed krogan bodies laid out on slabs, dissected but left to rot, certain organs preserved in jobs next to datapads, Mordin's mouth tightened and Shepard's nostrils flared. Only Jack seemed to have no reaction.

"Labs," Shepard said. Under her breath she added, "If you can call them that, anyway. Okeer has to be around here somewhere."

He was. They found him just a few rooms later, staring at a monitor hooked up to a single tank. Without turning around, he addressed Shepard in a guttural growl. "Here you are. I've watched your progress. It's about time."

Garrus wondered if Shepard would recruit this guy or shoot him. She leaned back on one leg. Her face was a study in annoyance and disgust. "I take it you're Okeer," she said. "You don't seem particularly caged or grateful that I'm here."

Okeer turned to face her then. He sized her up. "You may claim that you are here to help, but the formerly deceased Shepard is not a sign of gently change."

Garrus was struck by this. _He's got us there._

"Surprised?" Okeer challenged her. "All krogan should know you. Or have you forgotton your actions on Virmire?"

Shepard's face twisted. That might have been the hardest decision she'd made that day, Garrus knew, even harder than abandoning Ashley Williams. Saren had tank-bred an army of krogan free of the genophage, and Shepard had destroyed them and his research, refusing to allow Saren, the geth—and, as they learned, the Reapers—the advantage of shock troops as powerful and quick-spreading as krogan free of the genophage. She'd been able to persuade Urdnot Wrex in the end that he didn't want krogan that were free of the disease but slaves to another species's will, but it had been a close thing, and she hadn't liked making the call.

And when Shepard responded to Okeer, sure enough, her voice and expression was acidic. "I didn't have a lot of room for finesse. If there had been any other solution, I'd have considered it."

Okeer seemed genuinely surprised. "But I approve," he said. "Saren's pale horde were not true krogan. Numbers alone are nothing: the mistake of an outsider. One that these mercenaries are also making. I gave their leader my rejects for her army. But she grows impatient. It's time for you to take me out of here."

The warlord wanted to use them as a vehicle to escape his mess. "We're here about the Collectors, not your problems," Garrus said.

Okeer regarded him, looked at all of them. "I see," he rumbled. "Yes. Collector attacks have increased. A human concern. My requests were focused elsewhere. I acquired the knowledge to create one pure soldier. With it, I will inflict upon the genophage the greatest insult an enemy can suffer: to be ignored."

Mordin and Shepard both frowned. "So you don't want to cure the genophage," Shepard said slowly.

Okeer sneered. "Contrary to what survivors claim, the genophage does not produce strong krogan. The only quality it filters is the ability to survive the genophage. For every thousand stillborn, too many weaklings live. Every survivor is branded as precious. It's produced more coddling than your collective human teats!" He waved his hand dismissively. "I say: let us carry the genophage. Let a thousand die in a clutch. We will defeat it by climbing atop our dead. That is the krogan way."

Garrus looked at Shepard. _He's a madman._ He'd occasionally thought about how different Wrex and Krul had been from their compatriots. Okeer was almost their opposite, a krogan so krogan it was sickening, apparently endowed with just enough intelligence and ambition to be even more dangerous than most.

"I thought the krogan ideal was a return to the numbers that threatened the galaxy," Shepard observed.

"We will not need numbers," Okeer declared. "My soldier is a template. It is a greater threat than all the phantom siblings that would have been at its flank. The galaxy still bears the scars of the horde, but it will learn to fear the lance." He gestured at the krogan in the tank.

Garrus looked at it for the first time. Oddly enough, the male krogan in the tank was already in full armor—Okeer had fabricated the armor right along with the krogan. He was full-size but clearly still juvenile; his head plate hadn't completely fused yet, and his hump was still smaller than most. His fierce eyes stared at nothing; they were a shade of sky blue unusual for a krogan.

Shepard glanced over the krogan and away, dismissive. "Your search for the perfect soldier created a lot of failures," she said coldly. Garrus knew she was remembering the corpses they'd passed in the labs and the krogan at the gate. "You don't care about them?"

Okeer's eyes narrowed. "I failed no one. My rejects are exactly what Jedore asked for. She simply lacks the ability to command. They are strong, healthy, and useless to me." He looked at his prototype again, and his voice softened. "I need perfection. If a few thousand are rejected, so be it. My work will purify the krogan. We will not be restored; we will be renewed."

Shepard was unimpressed. "What did you get from the Collectors?" she asked. "I need whatever you know about them."

Garrus blinked. She _wasn't_ going to recruit this guy. If she was, she would wait to have this conversation until they were aboard the _Normandy_ again. He studied her stance, her face. _I don't think she'll kill him, but this guy isn't coming with us. Good._

Okeer peered at his monitor. "They are strange," he said, pensive. "So isolated, yet very available when your sacrifice is big enough. I gave them many krogan. I may have information for you, but the tech was consumed in my prototype after I determined how to use it without killing the subjects. Their deaths were unfortunate, but I only need one success to start the process."

That made Shepard look at the tank again. Then she glanced at Mordin, lips pursed. "If your pet soldier is as strong as you think, maybe I could use him."

Okeer stilled. "Perhaps I could strike a deal to secure passage," he said. _He knows she doesn't want him too._ "But my prototype is not negotiable. He is the key to my legacy."

Right then, the speaker overhead crackled. "Attention: I have traced the krogan , of course. I'm calling blank slate on this project. Gas these commandos, and start over from Okeer's data. Flush the tanks!"

Okeer's nostrils flared at the same time Garrus smelled the first hint of toxins from the air filters, sweet, cloying, and deadly. "Fuck!" Jack muttered. All four of them put on their helmets, starting up their own purifiers. But neither Okeer nor his tank-bred had purifiers.

"She is that weak-willed!" Okeer cried, furiously typing on his keyboard. "She'll kill my legacy with a damned valve! Shepard, you want information on the Collectors? Stop her! She'll try to access contaminants in the storage bay!"

Garrus and Jack had their weapons out as Shepard stepped to the warlord, furious. "Now you know something?" she demanded. "Don't jerk me around, Okeer."

Garrus, looking at the frantic warlord, knew Okeer didn't have any more than he'd thought he might have before. He was just desperate. "I will give you everything I can," he replied. "My legacy must not suffer this insult. Jedore will be with the rejected tanks. Kill her. I will . . . stay and do what must be done."

Shepard made a disgusted noise, but signaled for the others to follow her. They pelted out the other exit. They hadn't seen the tanks on the way in, so it made sense that they were on the other side of Okeer's laboratory. In fact, just down a ramp, there were rows of them.

Lined up in the dirt, the tanks reminded Garrus of Virmire. The resemblance was helped by the fact that angry, armed krogan were coming out of the tanks, charging toward them. "I want them dead!" a human female screamed, no longer over the loudspeaker. "This is my world! I'll poison them all!"

"Charming," Garrus muttered.

Then the deafening sound of heavy fire cut through the air. Glass shattered, bullets ricocheted off the heavy metal tanks. "Whoa!" Jack shouted.

"She's got a mech!" Shepard called. "Mordin, watch my back! Garrus, Jack—"

"Watch the krogan!" Garrus finished for her, pulling out his assault rifle.

Shepard just nodded, drawing the missile launcher.

"You're on distance control," Garrus ordered Jack. "Keep 'em back, and I'll take 'em down!"

Jack's eyes flashed and her muscles tightened, but even she wasn't going to countermand an order that made sense in a situation like this. As Mordin harassed Jedore, across the corridor of krogan tanks, and Shepard shot missiles at the heavy mech, Jack threw krogan back from their position. Sweat broke out on her brow and she grunted with the effort. Garrus fired at the insane rejects from cover. They roared as their eyes burned away and their crests were torn back from their skulls.

"Gas them, kill them, I'll create more!" Jedore shouted in fury.

"Somebody shut that woman up!" Shepard growled.

Across the alley, an explosion told Garrus that Shepard had blown up the mech, and his visor tracked a human woman flying through the air, thrown back by the blast. Heart rate elevated, injured—but not dead. "Shields are down and armor's damaged," he reported.

"AAARGH!" Another krogan screamed, his cry suddenly garbled by the bullet that tore through his throat.

"I see it," Shepard said. She put up the missile launcher and drew her pistol and blinked out of view. Mordin looked at the place she had been for a millisecond, then without missing a beat turned to cover their right flank. A program flew out from his omni-tool to freeze the last krogan advancing on that side, and Mordin's bullet hit the krogan at the same time as Garrus's.

On the other side of the storage bay, Jedore had stopped her threats, which made the blaring alert ringing out over the tanks all the more obvious. "Alarms in the lab?" Garrus sighed. "What's that krogan doing up there?"

Shepard walked back up the stairs to their position, and EDI's voice came over their radio. "Shepard, the lab alarms coincided with a systems failure. The remaining lab systems are unprotected, and I have gained limited access. According to lab scanners, the lab is flooded with toxins and Okeer's personal life signs are fading rapidly. I recommend haste."

Shepard's mouth set. She jerked her head at them all and took off at a dead run. Terrible person or not, they needed Okeer's data.

But by the time they got up there, it was already too late. "Contamination detected. Emergency vent in progress," a cool VI announced. The air was green with all the poison Jedore had diverted up here. But the tank had been disconnected from the lab. It was glowing. On a small display above the krogan's chest, his life signs were stable. He was in stasis, in travel mode, ready for transport. Okeer must have spent his last moments making sure the poison wouldn't affect his creation. The warlord himself lay prone on the metal floor, dim eyes staring at the ceiling. On the monitor, a vid was playing, taken only seconds before, it looked like. Okeer braced himself on the keyboard. His facial muscles were twitching. So were his fingers, and his eyes were going in and out of focus. "Shepard, if I knew why the Collectors wanted humans, I would tell you. But everything is in my prototype. My legacy is pure. This one soldier . . . this grunt . . . perfect," video-Okeer said. He tapped a button, and the recording froze.

Garrus stared at Okeer's corpse. It was impossible his prototype had been through any type of field test. "Why would someone so fanatical sacrifice himself for one krogan?" he wondered aloud. Dead, Okeer couldn't do anything for his people anymore. He had to have had a lot of faith in the krogan in the tank.

"Delusional," Mordin suggested, though he looked troubled. "Unlikely one krogan, however strong, could have impact Okeer wanted. Am . . . almost certain. Suggest leaving it."

Jack grinned. "I say crack it open. Let's see what a pure krogan's got."

"Krogan genetically dangerous," Mordin told her. "Socially dangerous as well. Have enough enemies without adding this."

Shepard had been standing by, staring at the tank, fists clenched. She brought up her omni-tool and ran a quick scan. As the fans gradually dissipated the toxins in the room, Garrus saw her take the data on Okeer's monitor as well as the data on a technician's computer across the room.

"He's not necessarily an enemy," she said. "A pure krogan can pack a hell of a punch. We could always use another heavy hitter." She patched them through to the ship. " _Normandy_ , Okeer's a no-go, but we have a package that needs retrieval." She looked the tank up and down and sighed. "And he's a big one."


	6. Contact: Changes

VI

Contact: Changes

Garrus was in the battery, putting off going to dinner as long as he could. When they'd got back from Korlus, Mess Sergeant Gardener had found him and told him about a Taetrus steak recipe he was excited to try out. The man was determined to get down dextro cuisine, but Garrus thought it would be better if he focused on getting just two or three dextro recipes right. He really was going to start cooking for himself. He made a note on his visor about it, and then saw three waiting messages from the same address in an account he hadn't used in weeks.

The air hissed between his teeth as Garrus took in a sharp breath. One by one, he opened the messages.

 **So are you dead yet, or what?**

 **Dad just came home, and he said you called him a few weeks ago. Sounded bad. Like you weren't sure you'd make it out.**

 **And I don't want to be pushy or anything, but you called Dad.**

The first edge of panic died off, replaced by an overwhelming wave of guilt. There really was nothing like a message from home to remind you what a terrible turian you were. Garrus brought up his omni-tool and typed. His fingers shook. **I'm not dead.**

The response was immediate.

 **Incoming Call** , his visor reported.

 **Accept?**

 **Reject?**

With a sour taste in his mouth, Garrus rejected the call. He typed another message. **I can't link up for video chat. Trust me: neither one of us can afford the bill. Probably shouldn't talk over an unsecured channel even if we could.**

Shepard probably wouldn't mind. Williams had called home fairly often on the _SR-1_. And part of EDI's purpose was to deter hacking attempts on the _Normandy_. _But you know getting Shepard to sign off on the expense and the security concerns aren't really what you're worried about here_. Garrus sat down on his bunk with a sigh.

 **You're spacing again?** As ever, Solana kept things brief and to the point. If they couldn't afford a call, it was because his position wasn't consistent. Ergo, he must have left his job again. He'd never told her what he had been doing on Omega, or even exactly where he'd been, but for all Solana had never gone into C-Sec, she had every bit of their dad's detective instinct. _And a better temperament for it._

Garrus was careful with his answer. **More or less.** Honestly, he had no idea how much leash he had to talk about their mission, and while stopping the Collectors would be more acceptable to his family than vigilantism—if it worked—collaborating with Cerberus definitely wouldn't. And Solana would worry. She had enough to worry about. It didn't help that this mission seemed like as much of a death sentence as trying to enforce order on Omega.

Solana stopped trying to be subtle. She never had been one for beating around the bush. **What happened?**

Garrus stared at the blinking cursor, seeing and smelling the body bags on Omega. – _I thought something was off when Sidonis called. Why couldn't I have stopped? Asked a few more questions? If I'd taken just a couple of them with me when I left when I had that feeling, would it had been different when we'd gone back to the base?_ —Finally, he typed, **Don't worry about it. How's Mom?**

Solana was angry. The frustration practically steamed off of her response. **Still well enough to miss you. Bad enough Dad's come home. Do them both good to see you.**

 **Me too** , she admitted. **What the hell are you doing that's so mysterious anyway? More "contract" work?**

Garrus was pretty sure all his family had guessed at what he'd been doing the past two years. The careful way they hadn't talked about it said as much. That Solana was breaking their unwritten rules and openly asking now said that, too, and that all of it seemed pointless and stupid to her. _Well, wasn't it?_

 _No._

 _I don't know._

Solana's questions said something else, too. Something _Garrus_ didn't want to think or talk about.

 **More like consulting now** , he told her.

 **Fine, don't tell me.** The swiftness of her response was an accusation in its own right.

 **I'm sorry** , he said.

For a long time, there was nothing. Then her reply showed up. **Sorry's worth shit unless it changes something. Just, are you okay?**

She was right. His guilt changed nothing. At home, he was useless. Since he'd left C-Sec before service was over—not once but twice, he'd be lucky to get a job as a dock worker or a fry cook on Palaven, and that wouldn't do anyone any good. All he could do at home was stand around waiting while his mother . . . Garrus took off his visor and massaged his crest against his sudden headache. _Psychosomatic physiological symptom of an emotional crisis, I know—or real symptom of the insomnia—but spirits if it doesn't still hurt like hell._

With Shepard, though, he fit. The Collectors were kidnapping entire human colonies, and he knew he could help her stop it. Especially if Cerberus was right and the Collectors were working with the Reapers, it was an unambiguously _good_ thing to do with his life—whatever was left of it. No tough moral questions, no shame.

 _Just a suicide run through a relay no one else has ever come out the other side of. And when Sol loses you, on top of Mom . . ._

 _She and Dad are model turians. They know how to cope with loss._

 **Don't worry about me, Sol** , he simply said again.

But Solana wasn't having it. **That's what families do, moron.**

Garrus sighed. **I guess you're right. Tell Mom I said hi.**

He hesitated, then added, **Dad too. Tell him I've got more unfinished business before I come home. And tell him I'm sorry.**

Solana's response was cold and furious. **Tell him yourself.**

 **Connection terminated** , his visor blinked. In effect, she'd hung up on him, and Garrus knew he deserved it. He sat on his bunk for another minute and a half before he decided Gardener's slop was actually better than being alone with his thoughts. He put on his visor, stood up, and left the battery.

Dinner hour was starting to wind down. Rolston tipped him a wave from the table. He was in an animated conversation with Donnelly and Daniels from Engineering. That was a pair of new recruits Garrus liked far better than the yeoman in the CIC whose too-personal questions he had to dodge every time he went up for a briefing. He nodded back, accepted his dinner from the enthusiastic Gardner, and sat down by himself.

He was eyeing his meal skeptically when the elevator dinged, Shepard walked around the corner, and Garrus forgot all about the rations. Her uniform top was unzipped partway, but it was immediately obvious she hadn't pulled it down the way many human women and asari did to accentuate the chests both species apparently found so attractive. From the right corner of her jaw to the top of her collarbone, instead of its normal tan shade, her skin was a purple-black that might have looked right on an asari but definitely looked wrong and painful on a human. She'd unzipped the tight collar of her uniform to accommodate the swelling. Turians didn't visibly bruise like humans, asari, and drell, but after ten years on the Citadel and two in Archangel, Garrus sure as hell knew what a bad bruise looked like. But Shepard had come off Korlus without a scratch.

She walked right past him up to Gardner, but Garrus could tell by the tension in her back and the way she pretended she hadn't seen him that she knew he'd noticed.

"Sergeant, turns out we're going to need those krogan rations after all," she told Gardner. Her voice sounded just a little forced, like she was pushing it too hard through a throat that didn't feel like carrying it just now. "You don't mind whipping up a monster bowl of noodles and meatballs, do you?"

Gardner made the obvious assumption. "Woke up that warlord's experiment, did you?" He nodded at Shepard's war wounds. "Don't look like he appreciated it much."

Shepard laughed. "He was a little disoriented at first, but he's a hell of a fighter. He's agreed to sign on, and he'll be a good addition to the team. His name's Grunt. Figure it's best if he takes some downtime for now, but I'll show him around and introduce him to everyone later."

"Heaping pile of noodles to go coming right up," Gardner said cheerfully. "Never had much of a chance to talk to a krogan before. Should be interesting." He bent over, opened a cabinet, and hefted out an enormous bag of pasta with a groan. "You want me to prep your supper to go too?" he asked.

"I'd appreciate that, Rupert," Shepard agreed. "Gotta file the paperwork upstairs."

"It never ends," Rupert said sympathetically, filling an enormous pot with water at the sink.

Garrus sat quietly, eating his dinner and staring at the table. He didn't say a word, but when he finished, he put his dirty tray on the shelf beneath the counter for the crew on scrub duty tonight and typed another message on his omni-tool.

 **Can we talk, Commander?**

He walked back to the battery without looking at her once. A minute later, he received a reply.

 **2030\. My cabin. Code's 9701.**

* * *

The first question Garrus had when he stepped off the elevator and into Shepard's cabin was how many of the credits Cerberus had spent to rebuild the _Normandy_ had gone straight into the captain's quarters. Half the left wall was a fishtank. Exotic fish purchaseable at certain souvenir shops on the Citadel swam behind the glass in the water.

There was a set of steps down off the platform he stood on that led into Shepard's bedroom proper, and he caught a glimpse of a bed made with a soldier's precision, the grim, scratched helmet from Shepard's old armor that she'd picked up on Alchera sitting beside the bed like a medieval deaths-head. It looked like some idiot had thought it would be a good idea to put an observation window over the bed. As far as security went, it was a terrible plan. Windows were structural weaknesses, and one of the last places you wanted something like that was in the cabin of the commanding officer, even aside from the expense. Didn't look like Shepard approved of it either—she'd closed the shutter.

Shepard wasn't down the steps in her bedroom, though. She was sitting with her back to him at her desk in the space that had to serve as her office, filling out reports like she'd said. Her tray was beside her, the food only half eaten and long since cold. Garrus frowned and checked his 'tool. She'd changed out of her uniform.

"You did say 2030?" he asked. "If I'm late—"

Shepard turned around. "Garrus," she said. She checked her own omni-tool. "I guess it is 2030." She stood and stretched. The loose, short-sleeved, blue shirt she wore untucked rode up a little over her hips. There was an Alliance logo printed on it in gold. Nothing official—like the fish, the shirt looked like some sort of souvenir, but they didn't sell shirts or pants like Shepard's on the Citadel. Humans on the more popular hub worlds—both men and women—tended to imitate Council styles, but Garrus had only seen clothes like Shepard's in vids about humans on Earth.

It wasn't that the outfit was inappropriate for a human—especially not when some of them dressed like Jack. Garrus had gone through the xenostudies courses back in Basic like everyone and the mandatory cultural sensitivity modules every year in C-Sec. The Alliance was much more formal than the turian military in some respects—and much more relaxed in others, like appearance before subordinates. But the clothes sent a message, like everything else in the room. Shepard had opened the door here in more ways than one.

 _She had to special order that shirt from Earth. She's homesick—for Earth or for the Alliance. Or for the way things used to be. Enough to consciously seek out things to remind her. That shuttered window could be more than disapproval for an expense or structural weakness. The books and half-finished model ship on the other side of the bed? She's got insomnia too. Of course she does. And that helmet—I don't want to think about the helmet._

His scan of her quarters didn't go unnoticed. "You know you can get a better look _down_ the stairs," Shepard suggested. Her face was wry. She jerked her head for him to follow her. His neck warmed, and he dropped his gaze and went after her into a small reception area on the right. She sat on a couch around a small table and indicated he should sit opposite her. "This work, or you want to check the model of the ship and the titles of the books?"

Garrus chuckled, nervous. "I think I'm good for now."

She regarded him, folded her legs in a way that still made Garrus's own legs hurt to look at no matter how often he saw humans and asari do it, then smiled, letting him off the hook. "The thing is to evaluate your surroundings _without_ letting the mark know what you're doing, Garrus."

"I'm having an off day."

Shepard gestured to the florid bruise across her throat, even more obvious in her loose-collared shirt. "Apparently so am I. This the part where you kick my ass for taking stupid risks?"

"I don't know," Garrus returned. "Do you have a reason why waking up Okeer's experiment on your own without backup _wasn't_ a stupid risk?"

Shepard held his gaze a moment. She raised an eyebrow, arms folded. "Because those other krogan down on Korlus went crazy. They heard Jedore and saw those armed mercs, and their instincts told them to fight, meet the challenge, and take out the threat. I didn't want to have the same problem with Grunt. I figured if he saw me and a couple heavily armed friends right out of the tank, the first thing he'd do was attack. Especially if one of them was a turian."

"The first thing he did was attack anyway," Garrus pointed out.

"He slowed down long enough to talk, which gave me enough time to convince him I had better enemies for him to fight. And even though he didn't see it at first, I was armed. I had my gun, and I was ready to use it."

Everything sounded so reasonable the way she laid it out, but nothing she said could rationalize away that bruise. "Hmm. Not ready enough. Did anyone know you were in there? Even if you didn't want backup in the room with you, someone on the radio or in the hallway could've made a difference if he'd disarmed or injured you worse than that in the first rush."

"EDI was online and monitoring the situation."

"I was," the AI confirmed, breaking into the conversation unasked with yet another reminder that there was no escape from Cerberus anywhere onboard this ship. The ache in Garrus's temples throbbed out with new insistence. "But I remind you that I could not have intervened if your initial encounter had taken a turn for the worse. By the time I could have raised the alarm, he would have likely already killed you."

"Or I would have killed him," Shepard retorted, eyes narrowing in annoyance. "EDI, sign off and enact Privacy Protocol."

Garrus wondered if he was imagining the note of displeasure in the AI's voice when she answered, "Very well. Logging you out, Commander."

"You can do that?" Garrus asked, momentarily distracted. "What are the parameters of the program?"

"Limited," Shepard sighed. "I'm the only one that can enact the protocol, and while it keeps her from saving the audio files to the drive or being able to share them, it can't keep her sensors from picking up everything that's said or making a note that I've _had_ a private conversation."

"So even if Miranda and her boss don't know exactly _what_ you've been plotting, there's nothing to stop EDI from telling them that you've been plotting in the first place."

"No, and I'm pretty sure she's programmed to tell them whenever I use the protocol."

Garrus filed this away. He didn't know if he could find a workaround for Shepard or even if he wanted to just yet, but it was useful information all the same. "So. Grunt."

Shepard's lips quirked. "He thought it was a good name." She dropped her gaze finally. "I should've had Jack, Miranda, or Jacob on call outside the door and on the radio," she admitted. She rolled her shoulders. "He slammed me so hard into the bulkhead, I saw stars, and I've seen some of the readouts on the things Miranda did to me. Probably would've snapped an unaltered human's spine."

"But he's stable now, and we can completely count on his commitment to the mission," Garrus deadpanned.

Shepard winced. "There might've been something about killing me if I'm weak and choose weak enemies."

Garrus rolled his eyes. "So we're safe so long as we get the krogan into a firefight ASAP, convince him we've got enough trouble on our hands he won't be bored. That about sum it up?"

"Just about," Shepard agreed.

"Any ideas?"

Shepard shrugged. "Cerberus is putting together a few more dossiers on people we might be able to use on our mission. If recruiting them is half as interesting as getting the rest of you has been, Grunt'll get his fight." She paused. "He'll get it sooner or later, regardless."

The odds of their success hung over their heads like a noose or the shadow of the firing squad. Garrus's thoughts drifted to Palaven, to the chain of messages now sitting in that account he never used anymore—and farther, to wherever a traitor still walked around breathing. Garrus shifted and an awkward silence fell.

"That it?" Shepard asked after a moment. "Have to say, I was expecting a bit more yelling about waking him up."

Garrus shook his head. "We've both done some stupid things in our time. A nasty bruise for a new ally we'll need to do a little more work to get on our side completely is a better exchange than some of the ones I've made." He remembered hundreds of vorcha chasing him over Omega the night he thought he'd had Garm cornered. _And that wasn't even the worst of it._ "Whatever Collector tech is in him—are you going to let Cerberus study it? Or Mordin?"

Shepard's eyes were distant. "I'm going to let Mordin have the tank. See what he can get from its computer and the remains of the solution in it. But Grunt? No. He's off limits. Part of the reason I woke him up. He's a hell of a lot harder for them to get at awake."

"Someone mentioned something?" Garrus guessed.

"Miranda," Shepard confirmed. "I stopped Saren. I stopped Jedore and Okeer. I didn't stop them just to let Cerberus pick up the old experiments on how to turn living creatures into weapons and tools."

"You can't stop them," Garrus said. "Once tech is out there, it can always be reengineered."

Shepard looked at the fading scars on her hands and arms. "I know," she murmured. "But I can sure as hell slow them down. I stopped them today." She stood, brushed her hands off on her pants and held out her hand. "Garrus."

He knew his cue. He stood and shook her hand, but couldn't help adding as he left. "Shepard? Next time—"

"Be more careful?" Shepard finished.

Garrus's mandibles twitched. "I was going to say 'tranq the bastard first,'" he said. "But yeah. That works, too."

Shepard chuckled. "I'll keep that in mind."

Garrus opened the door, then stopped. Jack's observation echoed in his head, _You waded out into this shit the second she called you, gonna get it all over your face again for sure—only turian on a boat full of Cerberus—but you sure as hell didn't do it just to take her orders._ It occurred to him just how many times his commanding officer had explained herself in a conversation that had lasted less than ten minutes, that he'd come here expecting her to. He turned around. "Commander," he said. "On the field, up here—you'll tell me if I'm ever out of line?"

She was back at her desk, already looking down at reports again. Her chair swiveled around, and she looked up. "I'll tell you," she said. The corner of her mouth turned up, and she tilted her head. "Hard to adjust back, isn't it, once you've been in command?"

"I don't mean to—"

"Of course not. You just do. It's who you are, and believe it or not, we need that. _I_ need that. A lieutenant capable of offering solid tactical direction in the moment if something changes or I need to complete a different objective, and someone I know I'll have to answer to the minute I do something stupid. Keep your critiques, if you have them, up here. Out there, keep doing what you're doing until I tell you to stop. Just be you, and we won't have a problem, Garrus." Shepard shrugged and turned back around.

Garrus took the elevator down to the battery. _There it is then._ Not _like old times_. Verbal dispensation, almost an order, to push the envelope until she said when. _So why don't I feel better?_

* * *

 **A/N: Ugh, for me, it's sometimes hard to strike the balance between implication and explication, leaving enough to the readers' imaginations to keep things interesting and saying enough for them to pick up what I'm laying down. There's so much nuance in a character like Garrus.**

 **Explicit: Solana is worried about Garrus because their father has heard from him in the last few weeks.**

 **Implicit: Garrus would only talk to their father if he was in a really, really bad situation.**

 **Explicit: Garrus sees Shepard's room and casual dress and is thrown a little off balance.**

 **Implicit: A LOT, most of it actually completely unrelated to Garrus's explicit crush on Shepard (Ch. 4).**

 **You see what I mean? There's three or four filters to EVERYTHING, and it's EXHAUSTING. Also very frustrating not to interpret everything for you so you can draw your own conclusions.**

 **Ah, well.**

 **That's writing.**

 **LMS**


	7. Horizon: Plague

VII

Horizon: Plague

At 1000 hours the next day, the call came through. Shepard's voice over the radio was terse and focused. "The Collectors are attacking Horizon. Gear up. We're stopping it." Garrus felt the drive core kick in beneath his feet, the hum of the engines as Joker started toward a relay. He held onto the railing that surrounded the main gun until they were through it. The _Normandy_ 's inertial dampeners were top-of-the-line, but no matter how badly the best engineers in the galaxy jumped the laws of physics, they had never quite managed to completely nullify the feeling of displacement after a relay jump, that feeling that your insides should be on the outside now—even if they weren't.

Garrus shook it off, pulled on his gauntlets, grabbed his gun, and headed for the elevator. Kasumi met him there. She grinned. "Oh, are we going down together this time? This should be fun."

Garrus's mandibles flared in response. "Can't wait to see what you can do."

" _See_ ," Kasumi mused. "Well, _maybe_ , but only if you're very, very good. You're more likely to see where I've been."She frowned. "Collectors. I know it's not the relay yet, but I hope we're ready."

The elevator opened, and Garrus saw not only Shepard but Massani, Jack, and Grunt down by Niels. "It looks like we're stacking the deck," he said to Kasumi. In the old days, Shepard had preferred to keep a team on the _Normandy_ for backup. Blinking, he realized she still was. Miranda, Jacob, and Mordin were still on the upper decks. _The team's just bigger now_.

Niels, a small, dark-eyed man with a nicely trimmed goatee, looked grim. He climbed into the pilot's seat, and the shuttle door opened. They all piled inside, seizing the ceiling handholds and sitting on the benches in the back.

"What do we know?" Garrus asked.

Shepard shrugged, but her mouth was hard, worried line. "Collectors descended on Horizon half an hour ago. That's really it. Except Kaidan's there." Before anyone could ask her anything else about that, she brought up a program on her omni-tool. "I'm sending you all a program Mordin's developed for us. It should protect us from the Collector's seeker swarms—the tech-enhanced insects they send out to immobilize their targets. Download and apply it now."

"Some interference on the ladar, Commander," Niels said over the radio. "Everything down there's gone fuzzy—what the _hell_ is that?" His voice went high, panicked.

Shepard punched up a visual on the computer panel by the door. An enormous ship like a fossil or seashell the size of a dreadnaught was parked over the colony. Metal rings moved around it in orbit. It was bulky, hideous, like a child with only the vaguest idea of what a ship was supposed to look like had sculpted it out of clay. Garrus hadn't seen anything like its irregular, primeval design, but he'd reread the reports from Alchera often enough to know what he was looking at.

"Our intel was good. That's a Collector ship, Niels. Keep it steady." Shepard ordered.

"Yes!" Grunt said, eyes alight. His voice was gruff and deep but somehow still sounded juvenile in a way other krogan Garrus had met hadn't. He tried to remember if he'd _ever_ known a juvenile krogan. Kids were rare for the species, for obvious reasons. Garrus looked over the new guy. A Collector attack on a human colony wouldn't have been the first battle he'd have run the unknown on, but there was no denying it would show him exactly what they were up against. _Is he biotic? Probably not—krogan biotics like Wrex are anomalies, and I'm pretty sure Okeer wanted his perfect soldier to be more representative._ He was equipped with the same Katana model that was Jack and Taylor's primary weapon, adapted for krogan use. _Makes sense to use him on the front line_.

"Kaidan's here," he repeated, returning to the topic of interest.

"He was the Alliance guy on your team when you took out Saren, right?" Jack asked. "The biotic. Easy on the eyes, at least he is in the vids."

"That's him," Shepard said shortly.

"The Collectors hit one of four places in the galaxy someone on your old varsity team might be?" Jack asked. Her eyes narrowed. "Smells like shit."

"Agreed," Shepard answered. Her eyes were fixed on the Collector ship on the display.

"Just as long as we _know_ we're walking into a trap," Kasumi joked.

"But a trap for who? And who set it?" Garrus asked.

"We'll work out the long game later. Right now our only objective is to stop the Collectors loading the colonists here on that ship."

"Works for me," Massani growled, modding the rounds on his assault rifle.

"Setting down," Niels said. "Good luck."

The shuttle door opened, and they all stepped out onto Horizon. Jack swore under her breath. Clouds of insects swirled and buzzed in the air, funnels and spirals of glittering wings and gnashing mandibles against a sickly, yellow-gray sky. The sound of their wings was a menacing hum. Past that, it was silent. Too silent. Behind them, the shuttle flew away, following protocol and getting out of range so it would be available for extraction if necessary.

The swarms hovered over the empty buildings of Horizon, just meters ahead. So far they hadn't noticed them, but Garrus saw all the others eyeing them just as warily as he was, and he heard Shepard patch the radio through to the _Normandy_. "We're groundside. Mordin, you sure those armor upgrades will protect us from the seeker swarms?"

Mordin's rapid voice came over the connection. "Certainty impossible, but in limited numbers should confuse detection, make us invisible to swarms." His tone dropped. "In theory."

Garrus checked his omni-tool, but the app was running. "In theory? That sounds promising."

"Experimental technology. Only test is contact with seeker swarms. Look forward to seeing if you survive," Mordin said cheerfully.

Shepard forced a smile. "Move out," she said. She gestured for Grunt and Jack to take point. With short-range assault weapons, brute force, and heavy biotics, they were the shock troops of the squad. _I'm on protection detail with Massani—while Shepard and Kasumi fill in the gaps on the field, flank the enemy, disrupt lines, and generally wreak havoc._ It was a well-balanced team, and there were enough of them that they could conceivably fan out if they needed to and hit the Collectors from two or three different sides or get more colonists to safety.

They circled the wall around Horizon. Garrus guessed there were large predators on the world, or they wouldn't have wasted the building material. The seeker swarms buzzed overhead now. Their hum was high-pitched and irritating at this range, but none of the things seemed to be paying them any attention. Mordin's tech was working. But as they made their way through the town gates, they were spotted by something else.

One of them was dragging a human male by his ankles toward a pod of some sort, two meters long. The one that had spotted them was keeping watch, holding a weapon Garrus didn't recognize. He said something to his buddy in a series of clicks that didn't translate, two more looked up, and then yellow energy beams ripped through the air, heating the area with a sizzling hiss. They all jumped away.

"Get into cover!" Shepard cried.

"I'm on it!"

"Going dark," Kasumi warned. Garrus heard her feet pounding the pavement. From where he crouched behind the colony's walls, he tracked her with his heat sensor. Her cloak fritzed out as she reappeared, her tech unable to sustain stealth mode and the omni-tool blade she extended to stab viciously through the back of the Collector leader, under his crest. He choked on the fountain of yellow blood that gushed from the wound, his glowing eyes flickered and faded, and he fell face-forward to the pavement. His companions turned as one unit to fire on Kasumi.

That's when the rest of them opened fire. With a roar, Grunt charged into the courtyard, bodily throwing the Collectors out of his way and firing his shotgun at them on their backs and knees. He'd enabled incendiary ammo, and his shots blazed and burned. Another Collector went floating up overhead. A bullet went into his skull and stuck, caught by the hard chitin the Collectors seemed to be made of, but the vestigial legs on his naked torso stopped waving, and his wings went limp. He slammed into the wall of someone's house with a crunch.

"Haha!" Zaeed laughed, exulting. With the others, Garrus quickly took out the rest of them. After the last one fell, he walked over and looked down at one of the corpses.

There were some weird-looking aliens in the galaxy. Hanar always looked like they should collapse into technicolor gelatin puddles. But Garrus had never seen anything like the Collectors. Four, yellow compound eyes stared hollowly up at the sky, and the chitin covering the body was knobby and deformed—it looked more like rock than like an exoskeleton. The strange beam weapon, locked in his hand through rigor mortis, seemed like it was made of the same stuff—more organic than manufactured, which was somehow creepier than a more ordinary gun. Shepard was kneeling over one of the pods, so Garrus took a quick scan of the weapon. Mordin would get something useful from it, something that might give them an edge in later engagements.

Shepard was frowning. "Look," she said, jerking her head at the body in the pod. The human inside—a female, mid-forties—was breathing, but she was shimmering in some sort of golden energy field, immobile. The man the Collectors had been dragging to another pod was in the same state. Jack nudged him with a booted toe.

"They're frozen," Grunt said with a superb and characteristically krogan grasp of the obvious. "This what those bug things do?"

"Must be," Garrus said.

Kasumi pointed to the man's eyes, flicking from Jack to Grunt to Garrus in helpless terror. "Look. Stuck in stasis but still aware. Tech like this could save me a lot of trouble on a job."

"The problem is they can't move like this, and we don't have time to move them." Shepard said, frustrated. She cursed quietly, then seemed to come to a decision. "Kasumi. Massani. Help us clear a way into the colony. Then I want you to fall back. Secure the colonists in stasis. Keep the Collectors from circling back and picking them up. Got it?"

"Understood," Massani said.

Shepard stood and gestured for them to proceed. Joker's voice crackled over the radio then. "Commander, we're getting . . . interference . . . we can't maintain . . ."

"That ship's blocking communications," Kasumi said.

Shepard's jaw was tight. _Well. Mordin's tech is still working_ , Garrus thought. _We do have that._

"We're on our own now," Shepard said.

Grunt and Jack led the way into the colony. The buildings cast cold shadows on the new concrete, but the doors here weren't locked. They stood open, their empty interiors gaping like mirthless grins. The people here hadn't stepped out for a party. They'd already been taken. Garrus realized the ones back in the first courtyard had been running. But up ahead, Collectors were still busy in the street, putting their prizes into pods. They still had time.

"Fan out!" Shepard shouted. "Hit them from both sides. Cover as many colonists as possible! None of the Collectors get away!"

Fighting the Collectors added an additional dimension to a gunfight, Garrus thought. It wasn't just stairs and catwalks you had to watch for. The bastards had wings, which means they could come in from directions he wouldn't normally think to cover. Stairs and catwalks he could usually turn to his advantage, but none of their team could fly. Fortunately, their wings seemed to be designed more for short-range transport than for long-term hovering. As the Collectors on the ground called to others in that language that didn't translate, others flew in from all sides, but they were all landing quickly.

 _If we had a brig on the_ Normandy _, we'd want to take one alive. See if we could get enough out of him for Mordin to develop a translator patch, maybe with EDI's help._

But Cerberus hadn't used its resources to build a brig, and both the cargo holds were occupied, and the Collectors didn't seem to be interested in surrendering. "Garrus! Get high!" Shepard ordered him. "I'll cover you!"

Garrus understood immediately. He jogged up the stairs of a nearby building and climbed a ladder to the roof. One of the settlers seemed to have stored hardware here—the first building materials to construct long-term, climate-specific structures to replace the standard prefabs. Power tools and a few sacks of cement were stacked up against a ledge. Garrus knelt by the ledge, his rifle in his hands. Behind him, he heard Shepard's pistol, picking off Collectors from the nearby rooftops and the guy that had followed them up the ladder. Garrus looked down at the yards and lanes below.

"Okay," he said over the radio. "Jack, Kasumi, they're setting up a formation to your left. Grunt, Zaeed, they're trying to hem you in against that building. Just ahead and to your right. Watch the guys above you." He lined up a shot, disrupting the skinny line the Collectors were forming ahead of the merc and the krogan. A yellow, bulbous eye popped and the corpse was flung backward by the blast. Grunt roared and charged bodily into the others, while Zaeed opened fire on the formation. To the left, a blue shockwave was Jack. The Collectors flew again, and this time it wasn't their choice. The sound of Kasumi's SMG ricocheted off the concrete prefabs of Horizon along with the shorter _blat_ of Jack's shotgun. Behind him, sharper, louder cracks rang out. Shepard had switched to her rifle. Incoming Collectors fell from heights of six and seven meters. Their bodies broke apart on the paved pathways and in the greenery beds.

Jack took up a position by a group of stacked Collector pods, wreathed in blue. "Come and get 'em, assholes!" she shouted. On the other side of the building Garrus was posted on, Zaeed had taken cover behind a tree bed in the middle of the field, covering Grunt's charges into the remaining Collector formation up ahead.

Garrus magnified the view on his visor. Something was up. The Collectors ahead of Grunt were making way for something else. "Watch the field!" he warned. "They're sending in melee fighters!"

A senseless roar of rage split the air. Arcing electricity sizzled around a charging blue-and-grey thing. It leapt on Grunt's back, opening its mouth to reveal thirty-two teeth, some meant for vegetation, some for meat—but all much more effective than they looked and capable of much more force than a turian's bite. The eyes in the skull were blazing craters that shone with an unnatural blue light. Before the thing could bite down, Grunt ripped it from his shoulders and stomped it into the ground. It erupted into satisfying gray-and-blue viscera, but with that viscera came a charge that flashed over Grunt's armor. He bellowed in pain and surprise, and then another two were on him, twenty sharp, narrow little fingers scrabbling for his eyes.

Behind him, Shepard swore. An arc of fire flew out from her omni-tool and into the small knot of the things converging on Grunt. One of the things went up in flames, staggering forward toward the krogan even as it burned. "Jack, 'round the building! Now!" Shepard cried. She shot another, but then they were all a mess of limbs and death. None of them could risk shooting into the frenzy and hitting Grunt.

"Garrus—" Shepard started, looking across the gap to the other building, where the Collectors had started assembling again to take advantage of the distraction.

"I see them." The two of them lined up against the ledge, firing at the Collectors just as Jack ran into the things assaulting Grunt.

"Hell, yeah!" she cried. She broke two attackers away from the krogan, and Zaeed was able to open fire again right along with her, but from the looks of things, her heroic rescue might have been unnecessary from the start, Garrus thought, clocking the action out of the corner of his eye.

Grunt's rage had turned to glee. He opened his arms wider with every shock, mouth open in a grin far more menacing than the mindless shrieking of his attackers, taking the pain and using it to fuel him. He used his elbows and the butt of his shotgun as blunt-force weapons capable of shattering bone to shivers, and Garrus saw him do it. His greaves were spattered with gore to the thighs from stomping the corpses into the mud. "Hahahahaha! Right on your ass!" he yelled.

In a moment, it was all over. Their section of the colony was as silent as it had been to begin with, save the buzzing of the seeker swarms overhead—and those, Garrus saw with apprehension, were retreating. _They're falling back. To regroup for another attack or to retreat with the colonists?_

Shepard climbed down first, and he followed her. They reformed around Grunt and Jack, looking down at one of the corpses of the Collectors' shock troops. "They're like the husks the geth used under Saren," Shepard said, echoing his own thoughts.

They were humans, stripped of every physical feature that made them unique and every mental and emotional one that made them sane, rational beings. Rabid monsters intent on slaughtering everything in their path and stuffed with enough tech to be dangerous even as they died. Their glowing, furious faces, all of them identical, all of them empty of anything but the desire to kill, were terrifying on a deeper, psychological level. _It's not that they're all that deadly—they're not, really, unless they mob you all at once like that. They're too stupid to be. It's what they represent._

It was probably worse for the humans, Garrus reflected, and sure enough, as he looked around, he saw that even Massani's expression was a little uneasy.

But husks here represented even more than an abomination against nature. Shepard was scanning one, taking pictures from various angles, jaw tight, eyes like flint. "The geth got their technology from Sovereign," Garrus said, for the benefit of the others. He saw the others recognize what he meant.

Even Kasumi couldn't smile. "Looks like Mr. Illusive was right: the Collectors are working for the Reapers."

Jack nudged the corpse with her toe. "Guess we know what happened to the colonists," she said.

Garrus shook his head. "No. The geth impaled their victims on giant spikes to turn them into husks, but we haven't seen any. The Collectors must have already had the husks. They want the colonists alive for something else."

"These husks are different from the ones I fought on Eden Prime," Shepard said. "They're more advanced. Evolved."

Jack's lip curled. "They still die when you shoot them."

Shepard looked at her. "They're using the colonists to develop Reaper tech," she explained. She looked back down. "Why? What's the end game?" she asked. She seemed to be talking more to herself than to anyone else.

"Maybe it's better not to know the details," Garrus suggested. He could see the speculation turning in her head, the fear and guilt building behind her eyes. The trouble with making yourself responsible for saving the galaxy was the guilt you took on when you missed a spot. _And I should know._

Grunt shrugged. "We'll find out when we stop them," he said. His confidence seemed to bolster Shepard. Garrus glanced at the krogan. His eyes were bright and focused. _No talk about killing_ us _now_ , Garrus noted.

Shepard nodded. She looked ahead. They seemed to be at a narrowing in the pathways, a choke point. There could be more Collectors where the path widened again, but here there was enough cover for two of them to hold the buildings they'd secured already. "Zaeed, Kasumi, stay here," she instructed. "If the colonists start moving, tell them to get inside their homes and lock the doors. Keep the Collectors out."

"We're on it, Shep," Kasumi agreed. "Stay safe out there."

"Let's move out," Shepard ordered the rest of them.

"Whatever you say, boss lady," Jack drawled. She pulled a nutrient bar out of her pocket and took a bite.

Garrus made his way to the front with Grunt. Overhead, the Collector ship still blocked out the sky. They were still here. But it was too quiet. The path opened up again. Garrus looked around. The pods on the ground here were empty—but the buildings seemed to be, too. "It's too quiet," he warned. His visor registered a flash ahead, and he dove to the side just in time. "Look out!"

"They're right ahead of us!" Jack shouted.

 _Another attack it is_ , Garrus thought. He rolled around and behind a planter, taking stock of the Collectors that had set up the ambush. On the building to the left, on the building to the right. A formation down the middle of the field and up the stairs that led to the heart of the colony.

A single Collector flew high above the others. A yellow-orange energy field flickered and buzzed around him in a way that was horrifically familiar. He lit up from the inside, burnt out like an asteroid. His yellow eyes glowed orange, his limbs blazed, and a crackling orb of energy, like biotics, but a sickly black-and-orange, coalesced around a rugged fist.

Garrus had seen this kind of thing before, just once, when Sovereign had taken complete control of Saren Arterius's indoctrinated corpse on the Citadel. The Reaper had overloaded and seized the tech Saren had had running through his body, ostensibly to hold his many battle scars together. The power of it had burned most of his body away, but he'd leapt around like a geth ghost, and he'd been capable of hurling energy that cratered and shattered the Council chamber stonework. The last few minutes of that battle, they hadn't been fighting Saren—they'd been fighting Sovereign itself.

A deep, dispassionate voice echoed from the creature hovering over the battlefield, the mirror of another voice Garrus had once heard on Virmire. A chill ran down his spine. _And not an excited, this-is-fantastic chill either._

"I am assuming direct control."


	8. Horizon: Purgation

VIII

Horizon: Purgation

"What the fuck?" Jack demanded.

"We are Harbinger," the disembodied voice announced as if to answer her question. The possessed Collector hurled his orb of energy toward her. Shepard flicked her wrist and threw herself bodily in the path of the arc, depleting a Collector shield to fuel her own as it burned away.

"A Reaper's got him!" she cried through grit teeth as she squinted against the blaze and clenched her fist. "Shoot that thing down!"

Garrus's visor read the aura around Harbinger's puppet as heavy armor. "Burn it," he yelled.

"On it," Grunt said. He flicked a switch on the side of his shotgun, and three other Collectors targeted him. He yelled in frustration and dove behind a stairway railing right as the first beam hit his shields with a hiss.

Shepard had darted in beside him, while Jack was across the walkway from Garrus behind the opposite planter. "They've got us pinned down!" she yelled. "What the fuck do we do?"

Shepard ejected a heat sink. Her face was drawn with pain, but her eyes were bright. "I thought we'd kill the bastards," she called back. She made a fist over her head, jerked her thumb over her right shoulder toward the right flank, and then moved both arms horizontally in front of her throat. Garrus made a circle with his thumb and first finger, and she nodded and went dark.

Garrus edged along the planter to the right. Keeping low to the ground, he aimed high. It was a bad angle, but the cover was enough. Barely. His first shot hit the railing in front of the Collectors on the right-hand balcony, and he swore as another Mantis cracked in an alley off to the left. Jack had seen what he was doing, though, and keeping low herself to avoid fire from the Collectors in the yard, she dragged the Collector to the left of Garrus's mark off the balcony. He dropped to the stone yard with a crunch. As Garrus's mark turned to look, Garrus caught him under the chin. His jaw broke upward and he fell back into someone's apartment. Now the angle was better, and Garrus rose to his knees to aim at the third soldier up on the second level off to the right. It was a solid hit this time, and clear across the field, an omni-tool burst through a Collector's chest in the back left corner behind the enemy. Shepard pushed her mark over the railing, knelt behind it, and pulled out her rifle again.

"Now we're talking!" Grunt roared. He leaned out from cover and fired at the Reaper's Collector-puppet. His tech armor went up in flames, and Shepard and Garrus fired at him from two different directions, caving in skull and chest at once. Grunt charged the line, Jack behind him.

Another of the Collectors lit up inside like a beacon. Harbinger's voice carried farther than the Collector's larynx could explain. "You will know pain, Shepard."

"Another one?" Grunt demanded, breaking a Collector's leg with his shotgun, then hurling him into another. Jack shot them both, one after the other, alight with biotics, panting heavily.

"The Reaper's not here!" Shepard explained. "It's using them! They're wired up and indoctrinated so Harbinger can take control at any moment, but its puppets are three times as dangerous as the drones!" Another Collector was attempting to retake the alley she had cleared to flank the field. She swiveled and shot him down.

"Ha! Nothing can stop me!" Jack boasted. Grunt blasted a hole in the back of a Collector taking aim at Jack's unarmed torso.

"You want a bet?" Garrus shot the one that had been hiding in the building over Grunt's head, coming up to join the party now. The gunshot, sounding in his general direction, made Grunt look over at him, blue eyes narrowed and fierce. Then he looked up, growled, spotted one last Collector behind a planter in the far right corner, and charged that way.

Too late. The last Collector went down to the sound of a Mantis, and Shepard reappeared right next to Grunt. He started when he saw her. "Ugh. Cloaking technology. There's no honor in that."

"Maybe not, but at the end of the day, I'd rather be alive than honorable," Shepard told him. "They had control of the battlefield; my dishonorable cloaking technology let us take it back. Lesson One in life outside the tank: in a real battle, you use whatever you can to your advantage. Learn how or die."

Grunt regarded her a moment, then he snorted something like a laugh. "You're a powerful warrior, Shepard. You signaled the turian before the fight. How did it tell him the plan?"

" _The turian_ has a name, you know," Garrus said, not really very annoyed. "Garrus Vakarian. We've met."

"Garrus, then," Grunt agreed, without taking his eyes off Shepard.

Jack scanned the perimeter. "Wouldn't mind knowing that secret sign language myself," she said.

"You mean Alliance standard combat signals?" Shepard said. "You can look them up on the extranet. We'll run drills during rounds until you get it right."

"I still say they're discriminatory against most sentient species," Garrus joked. "Asari, humans, and batarians can still use _turian_ hand signals to count the enemy, but in the Alliance, species with less than ten fingers are just S.O.L."

"You realize you just used an expression that only exists in a single human dialect," Shepard pointed out, amused.

"Canadian?" Garrus asked, faking ignorance.

Shepard shoved past him, unnecessarily so, as the courtyard was plenty wide enough for all of them, even given the Collector corpses all around. "You're not funny," she muttered, trying and failing to keep a straight face. Given the empty buildings all around, the Reaper somewhere out there that seemed to personally want them dead—Garrus considered it a coup. She was still wincing slightly as she picked up one of the Collector beam weapons that had been left leaning against a planter.

"The energy that thing threw," Garrus said in a low voice. "Some of it got through your shields?"

"Not the most pleasant experience," she said casually. She grit her teeth and ground them together twice. "Energy attacks. Don't think they're supposed to be lethal. Well, you heard the thing—'you will know pain, Shepard.' My shields kept off the worst of it. I'll be fine."

"You know, when you say that, it had better be true," Jack mocked her. "If it's not, you put all of us at risk."

Shepard looked at Jack, brought the beam weapon to her shoulder, sighted down the barrel, and fired directly over Jack's shoulder into one of the buildings they had just left behind. The glass in the window turned orange and melted, and a scent of burning carpet came on the air. She hummed. "No recoil. Weird. But I could get used to this."

Jack had frozen, staring at Shepard. But Grunt laughed, and then, so did she. "You're alright, Shepard," she said.

"Let's move," Shepard said, raising her left fist over her head, then opening it to wave them forward.

"That's 'move out;' 'advance,'" Garrus translated helpfully.

"No!" Jack said, voice heavy with sarcasm, taking her place in the line. Garrus smiled.

The only way forward was through a choke point on the other side of the field, a building that ran through to the other side of the colony. Judging by the panels and dish array on the roof, Garrus guessed it was the power grid for the colony, the center of the settlement.

The door was locked. Shepard hacked it while Jack and Garrus guarded the rear. She jerked her head at the corpses on either side. "May be someone in here. They were trying to get in," she said. The door opened. Everything was dark, powered down, but a boot squealed on the floor—someone around the corner, trying to be quiet. "Company!" Shepard warned. "Get out here!" she ordered. "Now!"

Slowly, a balding human male in coveralls peeked around the corner. He was unarmed, and Garrus's visor didn't flag any biotics or offensive tech on him—though he was a bit greasy. Garrus and Shepard both immediately lowered their weapons, and Jack and Grunt followed suit—albeit reluctantly.

The man's gaze cut between Shepard and the door. "You're a—you're human. What are you doing out here?" he demanded, angry now. "You'll lead them right here!"

Shepard's brows lowered. "We shot them, thank you very much," she said mildly. "They knew you were in here. Seems like it's hard to hide from the Collectors."

The man stared at the door, seeing the attack all over again. "Those things are Collectors? You mean, they're real? I thought they were just made up, you know, propaganda to keep us in Alliance space. No!" he looked back at Shepard, frantic. "They got Lilith! I saw her go down. Sten, too. They got damn near everybody!"

"Not everybody," Shepard said sharply. "We've secured dozens of your neighbors on the south side of the colony, and we aren't done yet. What's your name? What do you do here?"

The man sat down on a nearby workbench. He rubbed his scalp. "Name's Delan. Mechanic. I came down to check on the main grid after we lost our com signals, and I heard screaming. I looked outside, and there were swarms of . . . bugs, and everyone they touched just froze. I sealed the doors." His jaw went tight. "Damn it, it's the Alliance's fault!" he cried. "They stationed that Commander Alenko here and built those defense towers! It made us a target!"

Some people responded to trauma with paralysis. Some people broke down. Others got angry. Garrus had seen all types on the Citadel. They didn't have time to calm this guy down, but he seemed to have some information they could use. And sure enough, Shepard had straightened. "Commander Alenko?" she said, trying to sound casual. It wasn't the best effort. _Commander Shepard—a much better commando than she is an interrogator or a crisis counselor._ "Tell me about him."

Delan scowled. "What'd you want to know about him for? I heard he was some kind of hero or something. Didn't mean nothing to me though. I'd rather he'd stayed back in Council space."

 _Unfortunately, that's usually the healthiest response to heroes for civilians. You only ever see them when things are going to hell. Better not to get involved. But how were things going to hell before Kaidan showed up?_

Shepard seemed to be thinking along similar lines. "Any idea what he was doing on Horizon?"

"Supposed to be helping us get the defense towers up and running. I got the feeling he was here for something else," Delan said darkly. "Spying on us, maybe."

Maybe it wasn't so surprising that the Terminus colonies attracted more than their fair share of paranoid conspiracy theorists, people eager to escape the dominant culture and make it on their own, but that had never made interacting with them any more appealing. _Not that there was much call for it on Palaven or the Citadel._ Garrus saw some empathy in Jack's posture, but Shepard looked about as irritated as he was. They weren't going to change this man's mind, though. "Tell me about the colony defense towers."

Delan waved a hand, eyes narrowed. "A 'gift' from the Alliance," he sneered. "High-powered GARDIAN lasers. Supposed to keep hostile ships from landing near the colony. Had to build a massive underground generator just to give it enough juice, only we couldn't get the targeting systems online. So the Alliance gave us a giant gun that couldn't shoot straight. Stupid sons of bitches."

Unfortunately, they'd reached the end of Shepard's endurance for idiots—short on most days anyway, Garrus reflected. "Why do you think this is the Alliance's fault?" she demanded.

"We're just a small colony," Delan explained. "Nobody bothered us before we started building those damn defense towers and drew attention to ourselves. I left Council space to get away from the Alliance. Nothing good ever comes from getting mixed up with them!"

"The Alliance knew the Collectors were targeting remote colonies," Shepard retorted, jerking her chin outside. "They were trying to help."

Delan folded his arms. "I don't need their help," he said. "Too many strings attached. That rep said he was just here to get the towers online, but mark my word: there's more to it."

"Forget the Alliance for a moment!" Shepard snapped. "If you have defenses, we can use them against the Collector ship."

Delan looked skeptical. "You'd need to calibrate the targeting system first. It's never worked right."

It was time to cut the conversation short. "One of us should be able to figure it out. We just need the location."

Delan pointed out the opposite door. "Head for the main transmitter on the other side of the colony. Pretty hard to miss. The targeting controls are at the base."

Shepard nodded. "Thanks. Stay here. Stay safe. We'll take care of it."

Delan went to the controls. "I'll let you out, but I'm locking the door behind you," he warned. "I'm not taking any chances. Good luck. I think you're going to need it."

He wasn't kidding, Garrus thought. The transmitter wasn't far—just past the next group of buildings. They could see the spire behind the rooftops, but they'd lost the element of surprise. Not only did the Collectors know they were in the colony, Harbinger knew, and it was fixated on Shepard. There didn't seem to be a limit to the number of drones it could seize—every single drone was wired up with the tech. The only bright side was it didn't seem to be able to seize more than one of them at a time.

Massani and Goto were taking some fire too. "A squad's peeled off," Kasumi called in over the radio. "They're trying to get through to this side again. Some of the colonists are waking up, and the seekers are retreating, but if the colonists panic, things could get hairy." Garrus shot a Collector peering around the corner of an alley. To the side, Grunt took down his friend with his Carnifex at range. _Not just a one-trick krogan. Good to know_ , Garrus thought.

"Hold the choke point, but keep an eye on the perimeter," Shepard warned them. "I'm not sure how far these things can fly. Don't let them flank you!"

"If the colonists have guns, tell 'em to help out. Kick some buggy ass!" Jack suggested. "Eeaaggh!" She pulled a Collector down from the second story. Shepard lit him up inside the biotic field with her incendiary tech.

Kasumi continued. "They're sluggish, disoriented. Scared—"

"Unless they're trained, better keep them out of it," Shepard warned Kasumi and Zaeed. "Panicked civilians with guns can do more damage than an enemy."

"Wait—there's a guy here. Alliance-grade weaponry—"Kasumi reported. Gunfire echoed over the link.

"Help me hold it!" Massani yelled. "Goto, check the perimeter!"

"We've got this, Shep!" Kasumi yelled. "Just get them out of here! Signing off."

 _Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Schwick-hisssss!_ Heavy weapon, plasma-based. The sickly blue discharge hit the planter in front of Shepard, melting the concrete and shaking the ground. The wailing from the buildings up above sounded like husks, but these husks had been augmented even more than the others. Their backs were distended and swollen to accommodate more tech, blue-veined and metal-spined. Their heads hung at grotesque angles, and they carried enormous guns hooked up to enormous power packs. There were two of them, and from the lights pulsing on one of their packs, it was about to fire again.

 _Bang! Bang!_ Shepard appeared to roll into nothingness as she activated her tactical cloak mid-somersault. The planter that had been covering her broke apart with a crack this time. The grass behind it, still bent from where Shepard had knelt, withered like it had been scorched by acid.

Garrus sized up the new ones. Unlike the common husks, these new ones were big and slow-moving. Their weapons were powerful, designed to take out enemies in a large column, keep them from running back or very close to the side, but they fired in a straight line, and they weren't precise. To make up for these husks' lack of mobility, the Reapers had armored these ones heavily.

"We should take them down from two sides," he called. "Bounce their attention so they don't know which way to shoot." One of the guns swiveled toward his voice. He rolled out of the fire trajectory. Sure enough, the thing was too slow. He came up kneeling, took aim, and unsure where the thing's weak point was, fired toward the center of its mass.

From the other side of the field, a fireball came down in an arc that hit it in its other side. It staggered, roaring, and its buddy fired toward the source. Garrus fired at that one. Three heavy pistol shots cracked from slightly right of where Shepard had been last—Grunt. He'd caught on quick enough, employing incendiary ammunition to burn the husk from the inside out. It fell to its knees, wailing and sparking as it died.

The original target fired at Grunt, but he'd moved on, focusing on a couple of Collectors off to the left. Garrus took aim again, and a second rifle shot echoed along with his from the opposite direction.

"Your attack is an insult," Harbinger was hissing up ahead. "My attacks will tear you apart."

Jack pulled her arm back and let loose, throwing the latest puppet back into the corner of one of the buildings. She leveled a shotgun blast at it before it could recover, and Shepard took another shot through its head. It disintegrated as Harbinger's tech burned out the corpse.

Garrus looked at the smoking, stinking field. Collector corpses littered the ground, but there wasn't a colonist to be seen. Shepard had noticed too. "Come on," she said grimly.

"How come we don't see more frozen people around?" Grunt asked.

"The Collectors were ahead of us," Garrus said. "The ones that were on this side of the colony are probably loaded onto the Collector ship by now. We should hurry." It was easy to get caught up in the nonessential missions with Shepard, he thought. _We take out a few mercs here, some slavers there, start thinking we're big, damn heroes. Then you get to Virmire and you realize Saren's ship is sentient, and he's helped it brainwash dozens before you got there and started on the enslavement of an entire species. Williams dies. You get through the Conduit too late and find out a third of the Citadel's been torched, and twenty-eight cruisers go down in flames. All the other fights we fight are just dressing—this is the war. And we're_ losing _._

Silently, he set his visor to record, taking in the plasma scorch patterns, the dead Collectors, the empty buildings, the seeker swarms above streaming back toward the ship as he followed Shepard toward the colony defense tower transmitter.

They crossed into the yard where the Alliance had set up the transmitter. Crates and trolleys were haphazardly strewn over the space—it looked like this was their cargo yard as well—the place shuttles would routinely drop off supplies and pick up shipments for other worlds. They didn't have a lot of time to admire the scenery, though. Husks came out screaming from the other side of the yard.

"I'll take them down!" Grunt told them.

"Not alone, you won't! Come here!" Jack crowed, pulling one husk into another toward the left. _Bang! Bang!_

Pure gut instinct had Garrus flipping the switch on his rifle as soon as he heard the distinctive blast pattern start sounding. "By the tower!" he yelled. _Bang!_ There was no time to line up something pretty. The concussive blast was quick, messy, and didn't even hit its target.

Instead of hitting the heavy husk firing toward Jack and Grunt, he hit its partner in the leg. But Shepard had had the same idea and acted in the same moment, and her attack hit the one firing beneath the rib cage and knocked it back, burning. Its last two shots went off in the air, and its partner, only tripped up by Garrus's shot, swiveled to fire on him. He ran right, opening fire as he went on the one Shepard had hit, climbing to its feet again now.

The shriek of a beam weapon firing sounded behind him, and Garrus tensed, thinking the Collectors had flanked them, waited on the rooftops and landed behind them, but it was Shepard, with the beam weapon she'd taken from the Collectors on the other side of the colony.

It hit the other heavy, melting it down into a gray puddle of rotting flesh and Reaper tech as Grunt and Jack finished with the husks to their left.

Shepard straightened and walked over to the tower as if nothing had happened. Already the beam weapon was back on her back and she had her Locust out in case any trouble came up quick. She was grim, alert, and absolutely in her element. In a ravaged, half-empty colony, with abominations no one had any names for everywhere and the Reapers returning, at the dawn of a war the galaxy was completely unprepared to survive—he didn't think there was a more comforting sight.

He took up position at her flank as Grunt and Jack came up to join them in the shadow of the defense tower transmitter. The guns were positioned on either side of the field, one almost directly beneath the hovering Collector dreadnaught. Shepard looked down at the screen. An error message was scrolling across the top, and a bunch of numbers was flashing beneath it. "One of us should be able to figure it out, huh?" she muttered under her breath. She bit her lip, then pushed to broadcast to the _Normandy_. " _Normandy_ , do you copy?"

"Joker here!" came the pilot's voice, eager to help however he could. The pilot never said, but Garrus knew he was always happiest when he could join in the fight. Sending the ground party down, waiting for them to save the day—or maybe get killed—well, he was a soldier through and through, for all the brittle bone disease. He hadn't been fond of waiting around on the _SR-1_ , but it was worse now. _Since Alchera_. "Signal's weak, Commander, but we got you."

"EDI, can you get the colony's defense towers online?" Shepard asked.

The AI's cool voice came through the radio. "Errors in the calibration software are easily rectified, but it will take time to bring the towers to full power. I recommend a defensive posture. I will not be able to mask the increased generator output."

Jack looked up at the sky. Collectors were visible in the distance, already flying in. "Great. We play piggy in the middle while she sorts out the batteries."

Shepard's mouth twisted down. "Got any other helpful tips?"

"Just one," EDI said gravely. _When even the AI sounds worried, you know it's bad._ "Enemy reinforcements are closing in. I suggest you ready weapons."

The shrieking bouncing off the walls of the cargo yard warned them ahead of time. Shepard sprinted across the open field and bounded on top of a cargo trolley, equipping her Locust as she went. Garrus went after her and kept going, taking up position in an open window flanking the field. He kept his eyes on Jack. She would stay in the open field, where her shotgun and her biotics worked best, but she didn't have Grunt's armor or natural defenses. But as three or four husks ran out from the buildings on the other side of the field, he saw it was a distraction. The Collectors were all landing to the right—pinning down Shepard in cover, and one of them was already burning from within.

"Assuming control of this form."

Jack and Grunt, reacting instinctively to the situation, closed ranks behind Shepard. Their shotguns rang out in counterpoint, blasting the husks back as they faced away from Shepard, protecting her rear. Shepard's incendiaries sizzled and hit. The smell of burnt carapace rose on the air.

The Collectors were trying to flank. They edged around the perimeter of the field, trying to get a better angle—but Garrus had had them flanked from the start. He shot one, two, three of them before the others noticed. Two or three more of them set up their tech barriers to face him and knelt to fire.

"Focus on Shepard," Harbinger hissed. He hurled a globe of dark energy toward her. "You will obey, Shepard."

She ducked, and it hit above her shoulder, melting the hardened plastic of the crate. The acrid smell burned as Garrus breathed it in, but Shepard was already reacting. "Want a bet?"

She raised her chin, Jack grunted, and Harbinger's latest drone flew over the field. Shepard ignited the biotic field, and even as he burned to ashes she put a shot through him for good measure.

"Bypassing failsafes and attempting emergency power-up," EDI reported. "Please hold the defense tower."

"You think?" Garrus muttered, shooting a Collector trying to approach it from the right. Another drone lit up gold—Harbinger seizing control again.

"This body's pain is irrelevant," it hissed. It cast a black, crackling net of energy at Shepard. This time, one filament touched her arm behind cover. Her eyes sparked, reflecting the energy, and a groan of pain forced its way past her grit teeth. "I know you feel this," Harbinger taunted her.

Garrus retargeted and hit Harbinger's puppet with a concussive blast that knocked him on his ass and took down about half of his barrier. Seizing the opportunity, Shepard clenched her fist around her omni-tool, taking down the other half. She sent a dozen bullets into his throat. "Stay out of my head," she spat.

The trouble with Reaper puppets, though, was that they weren't the real thing. Reapers had unfathomable amounts of power and energy. They could wear them down by proxy, expending as many Collectors as there were to spend, giving them all the abilities Saren had had two years ago.

 _We don't have that luxury._

Grunt had destroyed the husks, and he roared, charging the diminishing line and scattering the remaining Collectors left and right. Shepard cloaked, and Garrus tracked her heat signature to a new position on the Collector flank, and focused his efforts on the other side of the field, cleaning up the Collector Jack had obligingly lifted into the air for him. Shepard's pistol rang out—she'd taken advantage of Grunt's distraction to switch to her Carnifex, slower than her Locust but a bit more accurate with a hell of a lot more punch. Her shot buried itself in the last Collector throat as Grunt looked down at the enemy he'd just rushed and blasted.

"No way is that all," he said. "There's got to be more. There's always more."

Shepard nodded wearily. "Recycle the heat sinks. We may need them."

"Sequential power-up initiated," EDI reported. "GARDIAN antiship batteries at 40 percent."

On the other side of the field, from the northeast corner of the colony, other Collectors were flying in to defend their ship. Garrus had been following Shepard's orders, picking discarded heat sinks up off the field so he could keep firing. He jogged to a position opposite the incoming formation. "There's your reinforcements, Grunt. It's good to be noticed."

Grunt raised his shotgun over his head and roared, the image of a krogan in complete and utter bliss. Four Collector bullets impacted against his shield. He doubled over, already running, and Shepard snapped, "Get in cover! These drones aren't husks! They'll take you out at range!"

Jack, on Shepard's right flank on the perimeter of the field, sent a shockwave ahead, disrupting the enemy fire. Shepard melted their tech shields like plastic. She rolled to avoid an attack from another one of Harbinger's puppets. "Your form is fragile," it told her. She came up on her knees in cover, pistol at the ready, and fired six shots into the puppet's skull.

"What's going on?" Kasumi called over the radio. "They're retreating, heading back toward the ship."

"We're firing up the lasers, preparing to tear that dreadnaught apart," Garrus told her, putting a shot into a Collector forehead. "They're pulling out before that can happen. Shoot them down! Don't let them get away!"

"The colonists are in there, Shepard! If we fire on the Collector ship, they'll die, too!" Kasumi cried.

"Better that than they escape to abduct some other bastards," Zaeed growled.

"GARDIAN antiship batteries at 60 percent," EDI reported. "Syncing targeting protocols to _Normandy_ 's systems. Continue to protect the tower."

Shepard was crouched in cover, ducking another puppet's attacks while another two drones tried to flank her. She shot at one, freezing it solid with cryogenic ammunition. Garrus shattered it with a shot to the torso, sending frozen, fleshy shrapnel ricocheting outward. The other drone raised an arm to shield itself, and Jack fired underneath it, tearing a hole through its carapace.

"EDI can direct the lasers to disable the ship, but if they get away half this colony's lost!" Shepard told Kasumi.

"If I must tear you apart, Shepard, I will. You cannot resist," Harbinger intoned.

"God, this guy is getting annoying!" Shepard cried. She reached behind her and pulled out the beam weapon, holstering her Locust in the same movement, threw a fireball into the drone's face over her shoulder, stood, turned, and disintegrated it.

The field was abandoned—for now. "Get ready. Gotta be more soon," Garrus warned. _If they aren't all circling back to the ship._

"EDI, we need that system online," Shepard snapped over the radio.

A shadow fell across the field, and Garrus and the others looked up. An enormous construct, the size of a shuttle, was descending toward them. Its mandible gaped open, revealing no less than twenty husk heads inside, maybe more. Its wings vibrated rapidly—unlike the drones, this thing was made to hover, heavy air support. A particle beam, five times as wide as the one Shepard carried, came down from its maw, cracking the earth and turning the grass black in its path. It headed straight for Shepard. She took one look at it and cloaked.

"A new one! Whatever it is, don't get too close," Garrus warned.

Other husks came shrieking from the other side of the battlefield—the Collectors had withdrawn—they were sending this thing and their suicide troops to make one last effort to stop or slow the lasers to give them time to escape.

"GARDIAN antiship batteries at 100 percent," EDI said coolly. "I have control."

The Collector particle beam weapon fired at the Reaper hover drone from the left. Garrus's visor registered its barrier going down as it slowly turned toward Shepard. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired once, ejected a heat sink, fired again, repeated the motion. Suddenly, it lit up with the energy field that surrounded the husks when they attacked or broke apart, magnified to ten, twenty, thirty times the power. The thing slammed into the ground, shaking the earth. Garrus tripped and stumbled. Lightning arced out from the thing, charging the air with a spicy taste, stinging under his fringe and at the neck of his armor where the ions came into contact with his skin. A wooden crate by the transmitter caught fire. So did some of the grass.

But it wasn't dead—beating its wings, it flew up again—barrier fully recharged. Garrus swore, retreating as the abomination pressed forward. Overhead, he saw the green light of the colony's GARDIAN lasers firing at the Collector dreadnaught—but it was already beginning to pull away. "Firing antiship batteries at Collector vessel," EDI announced.

Garrus skirted the perimeter, pulling back into the alleys, avoiding the overhangs. He fired a concussive blast at the thing. Shepard's particle beam came from behind the creature now, taking down its barrier again, working at its armor—but the husks were pouring out from that quarter. Grunt ran behind her, keeping them off her, blasting at them with his shotgun left and right as Jack tried to deal with a knot left back toward the area they'd come from—but even though the abomination was turning toward Shepard again, focused on her with an intensity that had to mean Harbinger was directing its targeting systems, it had drifted dangerously close to Jack's position.

"Get moving, Jack!" Shepard ordered. "It's programmed to—"

It slammed to the ground three meters away from Jack, knocking her and the two husks she was fighting to the ground. Jack scrambled to her feet, firing at the creature's underside, running back as it began arcing lightning, but Garrus's visor tracked the bullets as they slowed and vaporized in the creature's electric field. Wide-eyed and sweating, Jack lit up blue. She grabbed a trolley and hurled herself away just as the husks she had been fighting were torn apart in the creature's electric field. She propelled herself backward hard into the steps leading up to the transmission tower. She hit and slid with a pained cry, but she was out of range.

"What'll take this bitch down?!" she shouted, staggering to her feet.

"Just hold on!" Shepard yelled. Her particle beam stopped firing. She slung it back over her back and pulled out the Locust. _Is that really what we need right now?!_ Garrus thought furiously, firing off another two concussive blasts, stooping to scoop up the heat sinks he'd ejected seconds ago, still glowing with heat that was uncomfortable even through his gauntlets, but he pushed them back into the base of his gun anyway.

Shepard flipped a switch on her Locust, continuing to move around the perimeter, toward him so he wouldn't get caught in her crossfire. She concentrated fire on the creature, and it began crackling with a different electricity—disruptor ammo, working at its barrier. She fired off an incendiary. Grunt, to her right, had finished with the husks and began firing on the creature with his heavy pistol, roaring with fury.

It lit up a third time. This time everyone was prepared and crouched down, bracing themselves for its impact on the ground. Shepard rolled back toward Grunt, away from Garrus, leading it away so he could continue to fire on its renewed barriers.

"Fuck this shit!" Jack screamed, hurling a massive ball of biotic energy at the hovering monster. It hit, taking the barriers down in less than two seconds. Jack collapsed on the steps of the transmission tower, white and shaking. In a split second, Shepard holstered her Locust and drew her rifle. She aimed and fired at the same time as Garrus. His shot hit the underside and went up under the jaw—hers went straight down the gaping throat with its dozen gruesome husk heads. It lit up inside with a blue energy and vaporized midair.

Shepard didn't even stop to breathe. She crossed the field and reached down, pulling Jack up by the arm. Jack tore away from her, pulling her canteen out of her pocket. "I'm fine!" she snapped. Shepard stepped back at once—not too far. She looked Jack in the eye for a long moment.

"Work on your endurance," she said.

Garrus was more interested in the sky. EDI was still firing, but she was firing into empty air. "The ship! It's pulling out!"

"No!" Kasumi came running up from the other side of the colony. "We chased them here—we tried to hold them—they got away." She sounded desperate, scared, in way over head and far too aware of it.

Shepard looked at her. "Never mind them. The colonists?"

"They're pulling it together," Zaeed reported, walking into the field, assault rifle still at the ready. "The ones that are left, anyway." He looked over the field, the shattered, blackened stonework, the burning crates. "What the hell happened here?"

Garrus stared up at the sky. Before, he'd been on the _Normandy_ for Shepard and only for Shepard. Now he'd seen what they were up against. Two years ago, they'd stopped the Reapers from invading through the Citadel, but they hadn't stopped the Reapers. They were here in the Terminus. If they couldn't take the galaxy by surprise with overwhelming force, they'd begin with the thousands out here alone, isolated, the ones they thought no one else cared about.

 _They're wrong. Harbinger, whatever you are, wherever you are, you got away this time. You took dozens of people, but we're coming for you, and you fought us so hard today, I think you know what that means. We chased Sovereign across the galaxy and brought it down. We'll do the same to you._

"There's no reason to stay," he said. "They got what they came for."

The cargo yard was the place to be now, it seemed. The mechanic they'd met earlier, Delan, ran out onto the field, looking up at the lasers and the empty sky, clearing to a sullen gray. "No! They got away?!" he demanded.

"There's nothing we can do," Shepard said, her voice tight with controlled rage. "They're gone."

"Half the colony was in there!" Delan yelled. "They took Egan and Sam and . . . and Lilith! Do something!"

Shepard rounded on him, eyes blazing. "You think I wanted it to end this way?" she cried. "I did what I could."

Kasumi came up behind her. She gripped Shepard's shoulder. "We all did, Shep," she said quietly.

"It was a good fight," Grunt observed.

Delan's eyes were narrowed. "Shep," he repeated. "Shepard? I know that name," he said slowly. His face twisted in disappointment and scorn. "Sure, I remember you. You're some type of big Alliance hero."

"Commander Shepard," a familiar voice said. "Captain of the _Normandy_. The first human Spectre, savior of the Citadel." Kaidan walked into the yard. He looked older, tired. A little sick from the seeker paralytic, maybe. _Then again, after two years, you're not looking your best, either._ "You're in the presence of a legend, Delan," he said, without taking his eyes from Shepard for a moment. "And a ghost."

Delan's jaw was hard, but his eyes shone. "All the good people we lost, and you get left behind. Figures," he muttered. "Screw this. I'm done with you Alliance types." He walked away, and annoying as he was, Garrus felt bad for the guy. _He may be an idiot, but even idiots have friends._

Kaidan glanced at Goto and Massani. "I didn't believe you, but here she is." He walked toward Shepard like a man in a dream. He stuck out his hand, and Shepard shook it. "I thought you were dead, Commander. We all did." But Garrus saw the line between his eyebrows, the tightness in his jaw.

 _I have a bad feeling about this . . ._

"Your friend here was a big help back there," Massani said. "Considering he's Alliance."

Shepard's eyes ran over Kaidan, checking him for injury, noting the deeper lines on his face, the stripes on his uniform. "I'm not surprised," she replied. "Kaidan's one of the best. All right, Commander?"

Garrus _saw_ Alenko snap. "All right?" he repeated. "That's all you have to say to me? It's been two years, Commander! Where have you been? I would have followed you anywhere! Thinking you were gone, it was like losing a limb. Why didn't you try to contact me?! Why didn't you let me know you were alive?!"

Kaidan always had been wound pretty tight—now it was like a dam in him had broken, and two years of grief and rage were pouring out at once. On the one hand, it was a reasonable assumption—that Shepard had never died. _People usually only come back from the dead in myth and legend._

 _But it's also Shepard._ Shepard would have never left them all to think she'd died like that, and she didn't react well to the accusation that she had after everything that had happened here.

"Because I wasn't!" she retorted. "Cerberus brought me back. I spent the last two years in some kind of coma while they rebuilt me. I wasn't even awake until a few weeks ago."

Kaidan looked back at Massani, the Blue Suns symbol on his neck. He took in Jack's prison tattoos, the merc-level weaponry. He caught sight of Garrus, and his eyes did the now-familiar flick-and-hover over his scars. But instead of asking questions, he just turned colder. "You're with Cerberus now," he said. "Garrus, too. I can't believe the reports were right."

 _That_ was interesting. From what Shepard had said, the Council and the Alliance were trying to keep Shepard's freak resurrection and association with Cerberus quiet. _So where's the leak?_ "Reports," Garrus repeated. "You mean you already knew?"

"Alliance intel thought Cerberus might be behind the missing human colonists," Kaidan explained. "We got a tip this colony might be the next one to get hit. Anderson stonewalled me, but there were rumors that you weren't dead, that you were working for the enemy."

Hot anger coiled in Garrus's stomach and curled around his throat as he understood the big picture here. _Cerberus. Tip off the Alliance, and since you're right that Shepard caught the Reapers' attention, you both bait the enemy and ensure Shepard looks like the bad guy, making sure she can't jump ship. Top-notch strategy, if dozens of colonists hadn't got caught in the crossfire._

"They're right and wrong," Shepard told Kaidan. "I'm working with Cerberus, but in this one instance, they aren't the enemy. They're the only ones that are willing to act on the Reaper threat, and they want to protect the humans out here. They sent me to save the colonists, not kidnap them. And you—"she realized. "You were looking for me. Building the defense towers was just a cover story. The Alliance sent you here to investigate me, didn't they?"

Kaidan's fists clenched. "I was here for Cerberus! You were just a rumor. I wanted to believe you were alive, but I never expected anything like this." He gestured at her in a wordless expression of contempt and disbelief. "You've turned your back on everything we stood for!"

He was being an idiot. Less angry she was back Cerberus than that he'd grieved her for two years, but since she was back Cerberus, he was using it to push the pain away and blame her for it. But they didn't have time for Kaidan's personal crisis right now.

Shepard flung her arms out. "That's it? Not even going to listen to what I've got to say? Kaidan, you know me better than that! You saw it yourself: the Collectors are targeting human colonies, and they're working with the Reapers."

Kaidan folded his arms. "I want to believe you, Shepard, but I don't trust Cerberus," he said flatly. "They could be using the threat of a Reaper to manipulate you. What if they're behind it? What if they're working with the Collectors?"

Shepard was shaking. "Damn it, Kaidan!" Garrus snapped. "You're so focused on Cerberus that you're ignoring the real threat! Just look at the husks on the other side of the colony!" He was deliberately twisting the facts to suit the story he wanted to write here, the one that would let him keep Shepard gone instead of absorbing everything her death had meant. Couldn't he see what she'd been through? What they still had to do?

Shepard's arms were wrapped around her torso. Her every muscle was tight, and her mouth had a bitter, self-mocking twist Garrus had never seen before but hated on sight. "Hell, just standing here, look at the fact that attacking Horizon then sending me to stop the attack would be a spectacular waste of resources," she muttered. "I hate them as much as you do, but you're letting your feelings get in the way of what's really going on here."

"Am I?" Kaidan asked. "Maybe you feel like you owe Cerberus because they saved you. Maybe you're the one who's not thinking straight." He shook his head. "You've changed, but I still know where my loyalties lie. I'm an Alliance soldier. Always will be. I've got to report back to the Citadel. They can decide if they believe your story or not." He turned on his heel and started to stalk away.

Shepard dropped her arms and took one, three steps after him. "Kaidan—"she called. He paused. "Please," she said simply, and the Shepard he'd seen when he'd first joined up was there again. _I don't trust Cerberus, and I don't trust me either right now, but I trust you._ "I could use you on my crew."

She was begging him, or as close as Shepard got to begging anyone, but Kaidan wasn't listening. His eyes were hard. "I'll never work with Cerberus."

She swallowed, looking like he'd hit her, but raised her chin anyway to make one last effort. "So work with me instead."

He hesitated, and Garrus saw a shadow of regret pass over his face. Then he sighed. "Goodbye, Shepard," he said wearily. "Be careful."

She watched him go. After he had passed out of sight, she looked around at all the empty buildings. On the other side of the colony, people were beginning to call out for their friends and neighbors in desperate, fearful voices. Enough of them had started to cry that their sobs were carrying. But on this side of the colony, the silence pressed and beat at Garrus, Shepard, and the others, carrying its own accusations.

Shepard stood like a statue. Most of the scars she'd had on Omega had faded by now, but her jaw was tight enough you could just see where they had been. Finally, she spoke into the radio. "Jeff, send the shuttle to pick us up. I've had enough of this colony."


	9. Horizon: Perspective

**A/N: The latter part of this chapter covers events that are narrated from Shepard's POV in _Disaster Zone: Resurrection_ Chapter Three, "On Horizon."**

* * *

IX

Horizon: Perspective

Garrus had showered, dressed in the extra underarmor set Shepard had requisitioned from Omega—" _Until you can go shopping for another actual suit of armor and some clothes. We don't want you stinking up the place_ ," she'd said—and rearmored, and now he was sitting down to do some routine maintenance on his weapons.

The mods he'd used against the mercs on Omega weren't as good against the Collectors. Good for shields and barriers; not against chitin exoskeletons and Collector-tech armor. Heavy artillery units like they'd seen—the blue ones and the hovercrafts—as well as Harbinger-controlled drones could bring a hell of a lot of power to bear in a short amount of time. They'd been lucky on Horizon. Lots of cover, but if there were more next time and the next battle didn't have natural fortifications, they'd need to be able to bring those things down fast.

 _Incendiary tech and biotics will work_. _Heavy weapons. But concussive blasts could slow them down, help fritz out their tech defenses to leave them vulnerable._ Garrus took apart his rifle, cleaning the stock and barrel as he thought about how to put it together again, the tech he'd need. The problem was that the kind of power that would take down a heavy artillery unit in a hurry would be too slow for a horde of attacking husks. _No good blowing one away if six more take you down before your gun cools down._

The door opened behind him. Garrus waved absently at the door. "Shepard. Need me for something?"

"Way to be alert, dumbass. I could break you on the wall in a second."

Garrus put down his gun and turned to face the door. Jack stood in the doorway, shifting her weight from foot to foot, trying to watch him and the mess at the same time, hands balled into fists at her sides. "Jack," Garrus said, not trying to hide his surprise. "You know it's still the day shift, right?" He'd caught Jack in the mess once or twice after her first night on the _Normandy_. She handled her own meals up there in the off hours. The rest of the time she tended to squat down in the hold beneath engineering. Still expecting everyone here to turn on her—or trying to keep her word to Shepard by squashing her urge to turn on everyone else, maybe. But she'd never once sought him out. _Think her urge to turn on me is probably stronger than it is for anyone else on this ship—except maybe Miranda._

"Screw you, fucker," Jack snapped. She let out a breath from between her teeth, seeming to collect herself with difficulty. She glanced down at the workbench. "God, is this what you do in your down time? Typical."

"What do you want, Jack?"

"Sorry," Jack muttered, probably realizing swears and insults weren't the best way to get whatever it was she wanted. "Look. Shepard's lost her shit."

That was even more surprising. "I'm going to need a little more information," Garrus said.

Jack waved her hand in the air, impatient. "Shepard. She's lost her shit," she repeated. "After we got back from Horizon, she never left the hangar. Stripped down to her bodysuit and just started whaling on that punching bag she keeps down there. Pushups, pull-ups, weights. So maybe she needed to blow off some steam. I get it. But she's been down there for hours, nonstop." Jack's brows knit. "Don't know what the hell Cerberus did to her in the labs—she should be laid out on the floor by now in a pool of blood and puke. But she's not. Still going at it, looking through everything like she's still seeing that shit on Horizon." Jack's own gaze was long. She made a face and turned around, throwing up her hands. "Fuck it. Just fix her before I split her head open. All the noise she's making is annoying."

Garrus would never have believed it coming on board. The second he'd met Jack, he'd thought they probably should have left her in the freezer. It was clear she'd been through more than anyone should ever have to go through—the scarring, all that hate for Cerberus—and she hid out belowdecks like an animal that had learned it'd be kicked and beaten if it ever showed its face. But everyone had a choice, and Jack had made hers years ago. She'd chosen to lash out, chosen violence and hate and isolation. More antisocial than anyone he'd ever seen. _People like that don't change. When you're that far gone, there's no coming back._

That had always been what he'd thought. But here she was, the most antisocial, violent, hateful individual he'd ever encountered, concerned enough about Beth Shepard that she'd come looking for help. _Apparently she's_ not _gone. Not entirely._

"Fix her," Garrus repeated.

Jack threw her arms up, and Garrus tensed, but her biotics didn't flare—she was nervous, uncomfortable, and irritated. Worried, but not really angry. "Damn it, Garrus, she takes you fucking everywhere. Everyone knows you're tight. _I_ can't talk to her. I'm no good at this—this—"She made a noise of frustration. "Screw this. I'm out of here," she muttered, and stalked away.

Garrus hesitated for about half a second. He didn't know what he was supposed to do, but— _She's right. Screw it._ He followed her out of the battery, through the mess, and onto the elevator.

"About time," Jack growled. She didn't say a word to him as the elevator descended down to the engineering deck, and when the doors opened, mission apparently completed, she turned on her heel and passed through the door to engineering proper.

Garrus watched her go. _Strange._

But Grunt was in the corridor, watching Shepard through the observation window. "I thought she'd knock herself out ages ago," he remarked. "The tank imprints said humans are weak. Shepard has the endurance of a krogan warlord."

"Alliance soldiers go through some gene therapy," Garrus told him, "And I hear Cerberus gave her a few cybernetic upgrades. But even before either of them touched her, I'm guessing Shepard was pretty tough. Jack says she's been here for hours?"

"Since we got back from the human colony," Grunt confirmed. "I've been watching her almost that long. Her movements will teach me how to defeat her in battle one day when we've defeated the Collectors and I have found my own clan. It will be a challenge," he admitted.

"Assuming we all survive that long," Garrus said.

"It is glorious to die in battle," Grunt observed.

Garrus looked at their newest recruit. "Okeer teach you that?" He shook his head. "They tell us that basic training in the Hierarchy too. Give your life for the cause, and your unit will remember your names forever."

Grunt seemed surprised. "Turians say that? They are a worthy enemy," he reasoned.

"They're full of crap," Garrus said flatly. "If you're going to kill something, kill it because it needs killing. Or because what's at stake is worth risking your life for. The bullets that bring you down could bring down everyone that might remember you too, and when you're dead, glory won't mean a damn thing to you."

Grunt considered this. He turned away from the glass and regarded Garrus. "Okeer didn't program the tank with everything," he said after a long moment. He pointed down at Shepard again. "But that—that's a blood rage. Shepard can hit things all she wants, but she can't lead us into battle like that. You come to stop her?"

Garrus looked at her below. She was discolored, the way humans got when they were upset and had been exercising, and Jack had been right. Her eyes were dangerous and stormy—and they were looking past the punching bag she seemed to be trying to knock out into space light years away to the tail of that Collector ship, to wherever Harbinger was waiting. "Stop Commander Shepard," he mused. "Well. One can only try."

Grunt shrugged. "You're her _krantt_ ," he said. Seeing Garrus's confusion, he growled, "Her rearguard, her second. I don't know what aliens call it. But you've been with her since before she became a Spectre and went after Saren, right? If you can't stop her, I don't know who can." He shrugged again and ambled back off to the starboard side cargo hold where Shepard had set him up a few days ago.

Garrus got on the secondary lift and rode it down to the shuttle bay. Shepard was doing pushups now. Her grunts of exertion were the only sounds above the hum of the engines. She was hot and sweating and disheveled, stripped down to her underarmor like Jack had said, and whatever product she used to hold up her hair in the field was wearing off.

Garrus had to admit to a certain fascination with human hair. Humans were the only known sapient species in the galaxy that had the stuff—multicolored, multitextured, mostly useless, it seemed primarily decorative, though it also served as a way to tell a human's age and apparently was part of the reason they could adapt to a wider temperature range than many species. Shepard's was long and yellow, and she usually knotted it back behind her head or braided it back in a rope. But now it was starting to fall in extremely interesting curls around her face that bounced and swayed as she moved.

 _Focus, Garrus. This isn't the time for xenostudies._ The messy hair was only a symptom of the problem. Shepard seemed manic. She was doing pushups now with the same kind of intensity she usually directed toward blowing their enemies to smoldering pieces. As ever, her athleticism was fantastic, but she was moving too fast. Her breathing was ragged and uneven, but she didn't seem to notice. Didn't seem to see him, either.

He stepped forward, but Shepard sprang to her feet and started at the punching bag she'd hung up off to the side again. Her unprotected fists connected with a sharp, loud _smack_. She kicked the bag, and Garrus heard the chain that held it squealing with the force of the blow. She beat at the sandbag again and again, but like the pushups, her blows were too fast, too hard. Garrus's mandible tightened. So did his throat. He didn't know what Jack and Grunt expected him to say, but they were right: someone had to say something. _May as well be me._

"Shepard."

She hadn't seen him, but Garrus knew she heard him. Her muscles went as tight as a bulkhead, but she ignored him and hit the punching bag all the harder.

"Shepard!"

"What?" Her voice cracked, choked with fury and desperation.

It was a little hard to look at her. He'd never seen her so angry, and he knew what Shepard could do on an ordinary day. Garrus swallowed and replied. "You've been down here for hours. You haven't eaten all day. You're scaring everyone down here in engineering. Grunt says you're in a blood rage. Jack's worried. Jack. Says you've lost your shit. I'm starting to believe her."

"Well, screw them!" she snapped. "And screw you, too! Just—"

Hoping he didn't get a punch in the face for his trouble, Garrus stepped forward and put his hand on the other side of the punching bag. "Shepard."

She looked at him, eyes glittering. She was close to tears, Garrus realized. He hadn't seen Shepard cry since Omega, if that hadn't been the pain or a stim-fueled hallucination. She hadn't cried after Virmire. She hadn't cried when the Council had grounded her, or even after the attack on the Citadel. Shepard in tears—it was surreal. Fascinating, but wrong on the deepest, most fundamental level.

She swung at the punching bag one more time, but now he'd thrown her off her game. She missed, threw her hands up in disgust, turned her back, and walked away. She hit the bulkhead hard with her shoulder and slid down to sit on the floor by the shuttle. She rubbed at her eyes and pushed her hair back. She shot Garrus the kind of dirty look that two years ago would have had him making an excuse and coming back later for sure. _Guess I've changed too._ Anyway, now he was thinking about it, the hunched shoulders, the tight jaw, and the bloodshot eyes all took away from her intimidation factor.

"Damn you, Vakarian! Damn you!" she spat. Her breaking voice was as easy to understand as the subharmonics of any grieving turian he'd ever heard. "I was handling it. I was fine. Why'd they go to you, huh? Why'd you have to come? Don't answer that. You always pull this shit, and it doesn't suit you. I don't need you. I'm fine. I'm fine."

 _I shouldn't have needed Jack to come get me. I should have known this would be bad. I should have been here hours ago._ Still, Shepard's hostility surprised him a little. Every tell she was giving off told him she'd talk, that maybe she'd even been waiting to talk to him. _So why_ _the reluctance? She wants to talk, but she doesn't, too._

 _Figure it out later. That's a secondary issue. Address the primary problem first._ "If you're fine, that's the best imitation of messed up I've ever seen. Shepard. Talk to me."

Shepard scrubbed at her face again and groaned from behind her hands. "Garrus, they took half that colony. We were there, and they took half that colony." Her hands fell away and she looked down at the floor between her feet. "We were supposed to stop it. We're supposed to be better. I'm supposed to be better. I'm Commander Fucking Shepard. Some job of it I did. Not one more. You hear me? Not one more."

Garrus sighed and slid down to sit next to her. "We were late to the scene, Shepard. You can't blame yourself for that. Next time we'll get them. We're getting ready, and when we have all we need, we'll take those bastards down."

Shepard glared at him. "We better. They're pissing me off. You know why they picked Horizon, don't you? You know why they went there."

Garrus remembered the voice of that thing, leaping from Collector to Collector, possessing them like an evil spirit from the old myths. Harbinger. It had called her by name. The Collectors—the Reapers—were challenging Shepard specifically. They'd gone to Horizon to strike at her, even before the _Normandy_ had arrived. "Kaidan. The Collectors are working for the Reapers, Shepard. I think you've pissed the Reapers off, too, if it makes you feel any better."

She grimaced. "Yeah. Not much. All those people, Garrus!" She looked at the floor between her feet.

That wasn't all of it, though. Garrus knew it wasn't. "And Kaidan?" he guessed.

Shepard scowled. Garrus knew he'd hit a nerve and wished he hadn't. "Mind your own damn business," she growled.

Garrus looked at her. _Do I want to know?_ He took a breath and started to stand, but then she continued, voice low. "I shouldn't blame him. If it had been him dying, staying dead two years, then coming back Cerberus and wanting to be friends again . . ."she laughed, and like her pushups, the laugh had a manic edge to it. "Forget telling him where to stick it. I might've shot him. I know what Cerberus is. I know what this looks like. He has no reason to believe this is on the level, no reason to trust me. The Alliance deserves his loyalty—"

"—So do you," Garrus interrupted. He turned his head away immediately, cursing the vehemence that gave him away, but she paused. She stared at him.

"Do I?" she asked softly. "I don't even know what I am. I don't know what all Cerberus has done to me, but I'm not the person I was two years ago. I don't even know if I qualify as human anymore, all the stuff they put in me. For all I know I'm something like EDI." The uncertainty and vulnerability in her voice caught him completely off guard. She shook her head. "No. That wasn't fair. I actually like the damned AI. It's not her fault. She tries so hard, too. I'm something like . . . like those husks."

He couldn't let that stand. "Shepard. Shut up. You're you. Maybe with a little extra," he admitted. "But you're you. Stubborn as hell, and just a _little_ crazy." In some ways, Garrus thought, she was even more herself now than she'd been before. Back on the _SR-1_ , she'd been so perfect, so stoic and together that sometimes she hadn't seemed real, just this elite officer, this Spectre—more of an idea than a person. She had edges and dimension now that she hadn't before—or maybe he just knew her better. "I'm pretty sure husks don't spend time worrying about their humanity," he added. "Or lack thereof, I guess. And I don't think our resident baby krogan and psychopath would waste time worrying about a husk. More likely just blow it up."

That got a smile out of her. Garrus considered. "Anyway, I think I could tell if you weren't you," he said, remembering how he'd thought she wasn't when she'd first come looking for him. "You see some strange things on Omega."

She hissed and looked away, but it didn't sound like she was in pain. More like somehow, he'd said exactly what she needed to hear. He saw a tear fall down her face after all and pretended not to notice. He just sat there with her, wondering if this pulling in his ribcage would _ever_ go away when she was around. _I thought this would be_ done _by now. I need some shore leave. Some time to walk around and get my head screwed on straight._

Eventually she broke the silence again. "About Kaidan," she said. Garrus clenched his fist. He really didn't want to hear it, but he stayed quiet and listened. "It's stupid, but I do blame him," she admitted. "I understand why things went down the way they did. I do. I would've done the same thing. Probably wouldn't have been as nice about it. But I blame him anyway. And it _hurts_ , and _God_ , we could've used him." She closed her eyes and hugged herself, like she was trying to hold herself together.

Garrus tapped his feet on the floor and tried to think of what to say. It had been common knowledge on the _SR-1_ that Alenko had had a thing for the commander. T'Soni, too. As far as everyone knew, nothing had happened, but Garrus had sometimes wondered if Shepard's _feelings_ had always been quite professional, at least where the lieutenant was concerned. They'd been close, at any rate. Alenko had gone with her on a lot of important missions. She'd always asked for his input afterward and listened to what he had to say. She'd respected him. She'd trusted him. Kaidan had broken that trust on Horizon.

All he could say was the truth. "Kaidan's an idiot." Garrus looked at the ground. Because honestly, if Shepard hadn't found him when she had in the way that she had, he didn't know how he would have reacted to learning about her new 'partners' either. "But he was pretty messed up when you died. I guess we all handled it differently."

Shepard scoffed. "Yeah. You left C-Sec, went to Omega, and started shooting people." She sucked in a breath then, and her eyes went wide. Her hand came up to touch his shoulder, but it was too late.

 _Well. That's an entirely different dangerous territory, isn't it? Why don't you tell us how you really feel, Shepard?_ It was hard to believe a sentence that short could sting so much. Garrus took a breath. "Well. We all saw how well _that_ turned out."

Shepard actually winced. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"she trailed off.

"It's okay," Garrus said. It wasn't.

"No," she said, still upset. "You've been through enough. I promised myself I wouldn't say anything. And it's over now, anyway. It's done."

She wanted him to walk away, to just move on as if none of it had happened. But if she hadn't moved past the deaths of a bunch of thugs, thieves, extortionists, and murderers she'd never known, how could she expect him to move past what had happened to his team—his friends? Good men that had given their lives to justice and been betrayed to a death they _hadn't_ deserved? There was no moving on. Not yet. "Not until I kill Sidonis. I'm close, Shepard. And when the time comes—"

She cut him off. "We'll handle it." But when Garrus looked at her, she shifted, and she wouldn't meet his eyes. She'd changed since the old days, yes, but stripped of her Alliance title, forced into Cerberus, forced into a fight she hadn't wanted with a host of new cybernetic upgrades she hadn't asked for, Shepard was still more similar to who she'd been than she was different. She was still carrying all the ideals two years on Omega had stripped away from him.

 _Stripped? Or were you glad to throw them down?_

Shepard didn't let herself hate. She carried every life she took with her around her neck, always tried to find another way. But sometimes there wasn't another way. Sometimes the only way to solve a problem was to pull the trigger and accept that if that made you wrong, at least you were more right than the guy with a bullet in his skull.

 _Is it better or worse that I know that and she still doesn't? Which of us has it easier? And why do I hope she never learns?_

Two years could be as much as a lifetime. Garrus tried to explain how it had all gone wrong. "It played out exactly like you'd said. The politics, the smear campaign. But you were dead, and when they started tearing down all we'd seen, all you'd said, I couldn't—I had to do something. I thought on Omega I might make a difference. But I didn't even make a dent in the place."

 _Control—that was what it was really about_ , said the nasty little voice in the back of his head. _When you heard about Mom, after Shepard, with the Council doing everything they could to erase everything she was, you went looking for something you_ could _control. And how did that work out for you?_

It'd been crazy. He knew that now. He couldn't fight Shepard's impossible fight, so he'd gone and found just a slightly less impossible one with all the rage years of C-Sec ineffectiveness and months of Council avoidance policies had built up in him. Gone and done everything they wouldn't let him do in C-Sec, just because they'd never let him do it, and he hadn't cared much if he died doing it until he'd realized, too late, just what getting the handful of men just as crazy as he was killed would mean.

Shepard tried to smile. "You made yourself a name. Pissed a hell of a lot of people off. You've got talent, Vakarian. And you took an awful lot of bad off that station."

Garrus shrugged. It was true. But it wasn't enough. She knew it, too. "But I didn't put a lot of good back in its place," he answered, paraphrasing something she'd used to say to him back on the _SR-1_. "And I lost what good I found."

Shepard looked up at him and spread her hands. She wanted to make him feel better, he could tell, but she couldn't disagree with a single thing he'd said. _Downside of striking out on your own. When there's no CO, there's no one else to take the blame for your screw-up._

Finally she gave up trying to come up with words to comfort him. She collapsed against him, letting her head rest between his armguard and breastplate. It couldn't have been very comfortable, what with his armor, but she didn't complain. She smelled like the leather of the punching bag, like salt and sweat and herself—a weird combination of floral shampoo and harder, ordinary soap. There was always a little bit of gun polish in there too. It was an honest, reliable smell—just like her.

"Garrus, if you were somebody else I could lie to you," she murmured. "Make you feel better about your mistakes, or feel like I have all the answers."

That was where everyone else had it wrong, Garrus thought. Shepard didn't have any more of the answers than anyone else—she was just a hell of a lot better at finding her way in the dark. Garrus had used to wonder how she dealt with everyone looking to her, expecting her to save them, expecting her to be better. He looked at her knuckles, still red and swollen after all this time from her episode at the punching bag, and knew that even though Shepard handled the pressure a lot better than he had, it still got to her sometimes. On Omega, he'd driven himself to the brink, trying to plan for everything, expect everything. But he couldn't. No one could. _Sooner or later, there's something you can't see, some way they catch up with you._

He promised himself things would be different for Shepard. She'd always have one turian who remembered she was as lost in the dark as anyone else, as terrified she'd get it wrong as anyone else. Shepard was back from the dead, but she still bled when she got shot. She couldn't keep an eye on everything. So he'd watch with her. "I think I know you a little too well to think that," he said.

She laughed. "Yeah, you wouldn't fall for it if I tried, and I respect you too much, anyway." She raised her curly head to meet his eyes. Some of her hair brushed his face. It was soft, but it tickled, too. His mandible twitched. "I—you made mistakes, and I know it hurts like hell," she said softly. "But—I—shit, I don't know. I'm sorry, I guess. But we're okay. You know that, right? I'm just glad you didn't get yourself killed, too."

"I gave it my best shot," Garrus joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Her eyes flashed. _That was a mistake_. She elbowed him, hard. Even through his armor the blow connected, knocking the air right out of him. Garrus doubled over, wincing and laughing. "Don't even!" Shepard cried.

 _Well. It's nice to know she cares_ , he thought. Without really thinking about it, Garrus brought up his arm to hold her. Outside her armor, Shepard was light. Not especially short, but small, even for a human woman. Back on the _SR-1_ , Wrex had sometimes wondered how she fired some of her guns without breaking in half. Garrus knew better. A lot of humans looked so soft, it was sometimes hard for turians who'd never faced them in combat to believe that the Council considered them one of the more dangerous potential opponents in Citadel space, but from the moment Garrus had met Shepard in the Council chambers, he'd known she was deadly. She was sharp all over, all angles and long, lean muscle. From her level, gray eyes to her hard, narrow jaw and runner's build, she'd looked like she could kill him a dozen different ways without ever touching one of her guns, and they were _nice_ guns. Something in the way she moved, with smooth, controlled strides, energy and strength in her every limb. Alliance N7s were some of the most lethal spec ops in the galaxy, on par with asari commandos and drell assassins. There was a reason Beth Shepard had made the grade.

Still, she didn't seem too deadly now. It was nice just to sit with her. Hardly professional, of course, Shepard just about lying on top of him, him holding her there, enjoying it, but somehow it still felt right.

 _It's not like this is more than you'd do for Sol on a bad day, anyway. Or a good friend back in basic. And she started it._

Garrus blinked. _But she's Alliance. Or was._ From a turian woman off duty, Shepard's behavior would indicate a lot of trust, a fairly close, informal relationship—but it wouldn't be especially remarkable. But if he was remembering C-Sec coworkers' explanations right, conversations with Williams and Joker on the _SR-1_ —in the Alliance Shepard's behavior would be against regulation. Disciplinable action.

 _Easy, Garrus. To her, you probably don't even register as someone she could break Alliance regulation_ with _. Just a turian bulkhead. Remember that._

Still, Garrus's thoughts couldn't help wandering back to her strange behavior when he'd come looking for her earlier. _I wonder . . ._ "What was all that earlier? Some shit I always pull that doesn't suit me?"

She tensed all over, and Garrus's visor lit up like Unification Day. He let his arm fall away as she sat up and moved several centimeters farther down the wall from him. Garrus tried not to stare. It was an accident; he hadn't meant to leave his visor in target mode, but the feedback he was getting now was overwhelming. Her heart rate had hitched. So had her breathing. Her stress signs were all over the map.

"Nothing," she muttered. "Just routine word-vomit."

Garrus was momentarily distracted by Shepard's choice of words. "What a vivid metaphor," he remarked. "But I thought you said you didn't lie to me."

And there went her temperature—up almost .1 degrees. She wouldn't look at him. "It was nothing!" she insisted. "It's just, you know—you always try to pull the white-hat hero shtick whenever I just need ten minutes to sort things out. It's annoying! The whole turian rebel thing works much better for you, anyway, and it doesn't force me to play damsel in distress!"

The very idea of Shepard as some archetypical helpless human female in need of rescue made him laugh out loud. _Is that what's embarrassing her?_ "Damsel in distress? No one in their right mind would ever confuse you with a damsel in distress. But nobody can be a hero all of the time. Sometimes it's okay to borrow strength from your unit. It won't kill you."

Something like a dark cloud passed over Shepard's face. "You'd be surprised," she answered cryptically. She dismissed it. "Just next time, leave me alone, okay?" she asked.

"Shepard. I've got your damn six. It's the one thing I can do right. Even if it means sometimes I'm keeping you from shooting yourself down."

A turian officer might have written him an official reprimand and put him on scut duty for a week for a challenge to her authority like that. Shepard only reached over and pushed him, and it still felt like a victory. "You do a lot of things right, Vakarian," she grumbled. "More than most people."

It probably said more about her than him that she thought that, Garrus reflected. Shepard didn't talk about herself much, but he knew she'd had it rough before joining the Alliance and that it hadn't been a walk down the Presidium for her since. _Still, she has to have a_ dark _view of 'most people.'_ They said the inner cities on Earth weren't too different from down the wards on the Presidium, or the streets of Omega even—minus a half-dozen species. Imagining Shepard growing in a place like that wasn't exactly hard—but it made him sick to think of her there, just a kid, running with the hitmen, forgers, and cons so no one else would beat her to a pulp or sell her to a pimp.

 _Long enough that_ most people _look worse than a turian dropout and a failed vigilante that just happens to be a good shot with a rifle._

Shepard cleared her throat, interrupting his thoughts. "The lllusive Man's cleared Tali for recruitment."

Garrus took his cue. "Tali? It'll be good to have her back on the _Normandy_. Just like old times."

Shepard wrapped her arms around her knees. "If she comes. I ran into her on Freedom's Progress. The quarians have problems with Cerberus." She gave him a sidelong, self-mocking, weary smirk. "Just like everybody. And she was busy at the time, but she still trusts me." Her voice was quiet. "I think. And at least she knows what we're up against. But I didn't think Cerberus would let me pick up any of the old crew."

Garrus glanced at her. "And who am I, then? Nobody?"

Shepard laughed. "You don't even know, do you? You were a hell-outta-nowhere accident, _Archangel_. I went to recruit the vigilante. Just got damn lucky _he_ turned out to be _you_."

He'd guessed as much. _Coincidence. An accident. But, oh, don't you just wish she'd been looking for you?_

But Shepard was still laughing. "God, Miranda was pissed! She was sure you and me were going to team up to take all of Cerberus out straight out the gate."

Garrus hummed. "We could do it, too. Might be something to add to our to-do list. If we survive, that is." They wouldn't be attacking Cerberus yet; they needed them, and the Reapers were more important. Still, even if Cerberus was trying to save the humans in the Terminus systems, they hadn't seen anything yet to counter everything they'd learned about the organization going after Saren. _Resurrection project? Buying a mass-murdering convict off a mercenary gang? And baiting the Collectors to Horizon? If anything, all we've seen is just further support for the idea that they need to go down eventually._

He could tell she liked the idea of taking them down. " _If_ we survive. Think Tali will help?"

He shrugged. "It'd be a service to the galaxy. But even if Tali isn't down for some Cerberus destruction, Jack will _definitely_ help."

"Help?" Shepard repeated. "We'd be sitting back watching the show."

Garrus caught her eye. "Seriously, though, Shepard. Do you want to go after them?" he asked. The Reapers were one thing—they had to be stopped, but Garrus knew Shepard's feelings for Cerberus were much more personal.

Shepard sighed. "I don't know. I can't imagine getting along with Cerberus for long. The shit we saw on the _SR-1_? I think it's only a matter of time before Cerberus gives me an order I won't be able to follow, and then we may have to deal with them, before they deal with us."

Garrus shifted, and if it brought him closer to Shepard again, she didn't complain. "You know, turians follow bad orders," he remarked. "Well. Good turians do. I've never been what you could call a good turian, though. You're different, though, Shepard."

She smiled but shook her head. "No, not really. I mutinied against the Council to go to Ilos, remember? Mostly I've been fortunate enough to have been given good orders that make sense. But when I'm not? I'll do the right thing. Cerberus aren't often into the right thing. But on the other hand?"

"The Reapers," Garrus agreed. Putting up with Cerberus wouldn't be as satisfying as dealing with them, but somehow, it was good to hear that Shepard still had her priorities straight.

He saw the same grim resignation he felt on her face. "The Collectors, as bad as they are, aren't the real threat. If we survive this, and Cerberus is willing to help me fight the Reapers? I don't know. They're the only ones in the galaxy that seem to be taking the Reapers seriously. I may have to take what I can get, at least to start."

Garrus accepted this. "But first we have to take care of the Collectors. Through the Omega-4 relay, that no one's ever survived."

Shepard smiled wryly. "Straight into hell," she reminded him. She rolled her shoulders, preparing to rise. "But Garrus, we have to be better. Smarter. Faster. It's a suicide run, but it damn well better not be pointless."

No. If there was one thing he didn't have to worry about with Shepard, it was going on a pointless mission. "Whatever happens, I'm with you," Garrus promised her.

"On my damn six, whether I like it or not." Shepard's voice was dry, but for all that, she didn't look too upset. Another victory.

"You got it."

Shepard climbed to her feet. She held out her hand, and Garrus took it. She pulled him to his feet—but as she did, he registered another split-second temperature spike. "I better go tell Jack and Grunt the Commander's not going to explode any time soon," she said, releasing his hand.

Garrus looked at her, but replied normally. "Shame. They'd enjoy the fireworks."

"Sweet they were worried," Shepard commented.

It was time to leave. They each had duties, and it was time to get back to them. "I should probably go check on the Thanix," he said.

"See you later," Shepard said.

"You know where to find me if you need anything." They went up to engineering together, and Garrus took the elevator while she hung a right to check on Grunt. Garrus flicked his eye to the right, switching his visor out of targeting mode now that he wouldn't have to explain the action to Shepard. Back in C-Sec, he'd gotten into the habit of leaving the thing on. He'd learned early on that the Kuwashii model access to thermal imaging and heart rate had other uses outside of combat. Good way of telling if someone was wounded, and with the Council races, it had given him an edge, a way of knowing whether or not a suspect might be lying or holding something back.

But in casual conversations, sometimes it felt too much like eavesdropping. That was when things got awkward. Accidentally reading reactions and realizing two coworkers were having an affair—cheating on their respective spouses, discovering that a superior was lying about the reasoning behind a reprimand. Useful, maybe, but awkward.

Garrus didn't quite know what it was that he had just seen—if it hadn't been for that last fluctuation he wouldn't have suspected a thing—but he sure knew what it _looked_ like. Like it hadn't been pride that had embarrassed Shepard earlier—and like maybe he wasn't a turian bulkhead after all.

He was probably wrong, he thought. _What would she want with someone like you? Washed-up vigilantes aren't her style. She's got better men than you, humans, lined up around the block—pretty ones, too, according to Joker and Jack._

And even if he was right, she'd been Alliance. And she'd pulled away.

It shouldn't matter. They had bigger problems.


	10. Nova: Action

X

Nova: Action

Garrus wasn't surprised when after Horizon, they didn't take a detour before heading behind the Perseus Veil. Apparently the Migrant Fleet had sent Tali on some sort of research mission to an old quarian colony world—in geth space. Shepard had the entire ship on high alert before they entered the system, everyone at battle stations and ready to bug out at a moment's notice. Joker engaged the stealth drive immediately, a gunner was posted at the console, and EDI was monitoring all signals in the area.

Garrus _was_ surprised when he saw Miranda in the shuttle bay with Kasumi, Mordin, and Shepard, until he remembered she was a tech as well as a biotic—Shepard had deliberately called out the team most equipped to do damage to any geth they ran into.

Miranda's mouth tightened when she saw him. "Are you sure we won't need Garrus in the battery, Shepard?" she asked. "That Thanix needs constant calibrations in order to fire accurately. If the geth have developed the technology to detect the _Normandy_ , we may need the gun."

"I wouldn't say it needs constant calibrations," Garrus said. "Just about four hours a day. It packs a punch, but the Hierarchy hasn't quite figured out the technology yet. I'm actually writing down some of the processes I've been using to keep it running and forwarding them to the scientists—"

"Would like to see documentation," Mordin interrupted.

"I can get it to you," Garrus offered. "If you have any ideas, I'm open to them."

"Ship-grade weaponry not my specialty. Still, may be able to offer simplifications for firing algorithms. Anything that helps."

"The point is, I'm not certain taking our gunnery officer groundside in geth space is a good idea," Miranda said again, annoyed.

"Donnelly says the gun's in good shape," Shepard said. "We don't need Garrus to fire the gun, just to maintain it. On the other hand, he's the only other person on board who's fought the geth."

"Besides, I'm not staying back if Tali's in trouble," Garrus said.

Niels walked up. "Counting on some action, then?" he asked Garrus, taking his seat in the shuttle and opening the main door. They piled in.

"Oh, no. We're in geth space," Garrus said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"No more than goes wrong on most of our missions," Kasumi said, laughing with Shepard and Niels as she sat next to Miranda.

"Just so long as we're prepared," Garrus replied.

"Jeff, we're ready to leave," Shepard called over the radio. "Take us out, Niels."

Despite the danger, they descended without danger, but as they passed into Haestrom's atmosphere, Niels called back, "This was a quarian colony world, right? Before the war with the geth."

"That's right," Miranda said. "When the geth drove the quarians off their homeworld, they seized all the colony worlds as well."

"That was three hundred years ago, wasn't it? Before they had to start wearing those suits everywhere from living in space all the time."

"Not quite three hundred years ago, but yes. What's your point?" Miranda asked.

"Not sure how they did it, is all, ma'am," Niels said. "I'm getting some weird readings out there. Something's up with the sun."

"Of course there is," Shepard said.

"Can't pinpoint your friend's location, either," Niels continued. "According to the last reports, she's up here somewhere, but there's a lot of interference."

"Just set us down," Shepard ordered. "Maybe we can slip in quietly."

"When's the last time we did that, again?" Garrus murmured.

"I live in hope," Shepard sighed. Off to the side, Garrus saw Miranda watching the two of them, eyes narrowed, mouth tight. He'd occasionally gotten the impression Miranda hadn't gotten over their little heart-to-heart when he'd first joined the crew, and he was fairly certain that she hadn't wanted to leave him on the _Normandy_ just because he took care of the gun, even if her reasoning made sense. He was pretty sure he wouldn't have even needed Shepard to tell him Miranda wasn't his biggest fan—since Shepard had dropped a hint about that the day before, though— _she probably_ really _doesn't like me. May not even have anything to do with being turian on a boat full of Cerberus. Just my natural charm._

Niels set them down. The door opened, and EDI spoke up. "Our data indicates considerable geth activity, Shepard, and there is an environmental hazard. Solar output has overwhelmed Haestrom's protective magnetosphere. Exposure to direct sunlight will damage your shields."

Garrus stepped out of the shuttle and he felt it immediately. Heat like an open oven door radiating down from the sky and up from the bare rock under his boots. The solar radiation started frying his shields at once, and he started to sweat—but he knew the humans and Mordin would have it worse. Turians had evolved on a world with a harsher sun—the climate was comparable to the tropics of Earth, according to the xenostudies instructors, but the radiation meant everything on Palaven had developed a natural resistance to solar waves. An unprotected turian was miserable and next to useless on a world like Noveria, but here he had an advantage the others didn't. As soon as their shields depleted, the radiation here could do them serious damage.

 _And it's not like it won't affect you either—it'll just take longer._

"Having serious issues with my shields," he said, trying to balance them. It was no good. All the power he could reroute to the shields would just fry too. The tech wasn't designed to withstand a sun like this.

"And I'm wearing black. Can we get in the shade, please?" Kasumi asked.

Niels had dropped them in a ruin, an old quarian colony settlement. The stone walls, cracked and crumbling, still cast a shadow, and they all ran for it. Crowding inside, their shields started to recover immediately. It was stuffier, almost hotter, given the heat coming off of the walls. On the plus side, they weren't about to all grow five-kilo tumors.

They looked at one another. "Well," Shepard said, summing it up. " _This_ should be interesting."

Kasumi giggled. Miranda scowled. "That's one way to put it. Come on. Let's get Tali'Zorah and go."

Shepard raised an eyebrow at her. "Come on, Miranda! Where's your sense of adventure? A tiptoe through sun-scorched, old quarian ruins, never knowing if we'll be able to get to the next patch of shade in time or the geth might drop in? It doesn't get any better than this!"

"You have a warped sense of adventure," Miranda informed her.

"Hazard of being a career soldier," Shepard said. "Or maybe of being resurrected."

"Don't make this my fault," Miranda retorted.

Shepard hummed, as if unconvinced, and led the way. They hugged the walls and jogged through the open spaces, and Garrus wondered if it was really better to be hot and miserable on a world like Haestrom than it was to be cold and miserable on a world like Noveria. _Maybe our friends and enemies just need to start hiding out on nicer planets._

They found a working door and passed into what looked like an old gatehouse. That was when they saw the first sign of Tali. A male quarian was sprawled inside the door. Dead.

All joking forgotten, Shepard knelt beside the body. "He was shot," she said. "Geth, probably, but the wound shouldn't have been fatal. Nasty graze on the upper arm, but there's not a whole lot of blood here. He died of the infection. Maybe shock. Hang on—"

She activated his omni-tool, and a holo of the quarian's head hovered above his forearm. "Emergency log entry: The geth are here. I've stayed to buy the others time. Anyone who gets this: Find Tali'Zorah! She and that data are all that matters! _Keelah se'lai_."

It was a grim scene. "I hope we're not too late," Garrus said. Back on the _SR-1_ , Shepard had held Tali back most times. She'd only been a kid at the time, the equivalent of a turian fresh out of basic, and pretty obviously hadn't received anything like the education turians received in basic training. She'd been in way over her head, and he'd gotten the feeling Shepard had taken her on more to protect her than anything else. He'd warned Shepard then to train her while they had the chance—the Migrant Fleet clearly wouldn't be as concerned about Tali's safety.

 _I don't know if this is one of the times where I should hate that I was right—or if Tali's involvement on the_ SR-1 _and everything we taught her actually landed her this mission. But if that quarian died of infection or shock—Tali learned to handle herself, but she's a quarian like the rest of her people. I of all people should know how little it takes—but we'd like to believe our friends are stronger than that._

He studied Shepard's face in profile. She'd come back, but so many of them hadn't. _No one can escape death forever. No one's stronger than that._

"Let's go," Shepard said.

Of course, the second they stepped out of the old gatehouse to head deeper into the ruins, there was a whooshing noise overhead. A shadow passed over the sun—and not the kind they wanted to see. "Incoming drop ship!" Garrus yelled.

"We're compromised!" Miranda cried at the exact same moment. She and Mordin dived behind a fallen pillar that had once held up a pavilion. Kasumi and Shepard vanished, and Garrus darted back into the gatehouse and lowered the window as five geth fell from the sky. Clouds of cement dust came up where they hit, and one of them immediately employed cloaking technology of its own.

"Fantastic," Garrus muttered. He'd learned to track Shepard and Kasumi across the battlefield using their heat signatures, but the geth were synthetic, and advanced enough they didn't give off a lot of heat at all—and looking around, his heat sensors were a little fuzzy anyway. They didn't like this sun either. Instead, he had to look hard for the shimmer in the air that indicated a moving mass, where the cloaking technology couldn't quite mimic the surrounding molecules quickly enough. Most cloaks had them—even Shepard's and Kasumi's. If you just looked hard enough, you could see where they were—or where they'd been, anyway. Most people didn't have time to look hard enough in the middle of a firefight.

Gunfire echoed off the stone of the ruins, geth soldiers exchanging fire with the others. Garrus watched for the cloaked unit. Finally he saw it, a slight shimmer in the air, and more—a luminescence at about the height of a head. The cloak hid the geth, but couldn't hide the light its head was giving off. _Poor design_ , Garrus thought. He flicked his wrist and sent an overload program spinning into the air around that light.

The geth's tech fritzed out. It was visible again. It staggered back, shaking its head, its shields completely gone. Garrus fired. There was something uniquely satisfying about seeing their flashlight heads spark and crumple, he thought. No blood, no mess, no fuss. Just a light going dark and one more synthetic bastard down.

The others had taken care of the rest of the geth soldiers the dropship had sent down, but Kasumi had her omni-tool up, and she looked grim. "Guys, EDI was right. I'm picking up electromagnetic signals all over the place. These ruins are crawling with geth. They're everywhere. We should be careful."

"Right. Fighting the geth, lesson one: your tech is your best friend," Shepard told them all. "Use disruptor ammo, overload programs, hack them if you can—they're synthetic, and we can use that against them. They've generally got powerful shields and weak armor. Account for that in your attacks. We want to avoid formations if we can—that's how they work, and they do it much better than we can. They're networked together and coordinate their attacks. Unpredictability is an advantage here. Well. We have to account for the unpredictable shadows anyway. Everyone understand?"

Everyone murmured agreement, and Garrus saw Kasumi's shoulders straighten. Along with Jack, she was one that was a little out of her depth here; Garrus had noticed on Horizon. The two of them weren't soldiers and were more used to avoiding trouble than stopping it. Jack had run into enough trouble on her own anyway that she was adjusting just fine, and with her attitude and a team at her back that wouldn't let her down, it was looking like being on a suicide mission with Shepard might actually be good for her. Kasumi—she was a thief. Preferred working on her own, or making much less noise, anyway, and she was too empathic and compassionate. Very good at what she did, but it made her anxious to do it when there were lives depending on it, and Garrus didn't think she really trusted anyone but Shepard.

"We've got this," he said, ostensibly to the whole team, looking at no one in particular. They moved on after Shepard.

It was slow going, despite the occasional dashes across open areas to the next fallen pillar or crumbled wall. They hugged the shade—but the geth didn't have to. Oh, it looked like their shields fried in the sun just the same, but the synthetics could stand the heat. They didn't have to worry about radiation when their shields burnt out. The geth could move anywhere in any direction, while Garrus and the others were restricted to a few avenues of attack—and the geth knew to aim for them in the shade. It wasn't hard for them to box them in against any wall or pillar, and taking enemies down when cornered always took longer.

Fortunately, the geth were smart, but most of them weren't as smart as your average organic soldier, not now. When the rocket troopers started showing up, Garrus was prepared for things to get really interesting, but they didn't shoot at the walls and overhangs, use the terrain against the enemy. The geth kept aiming right at them.

Shepard was in her element here. She'd learned more from Tali back in the day than Garrus had ever thought. She kept hacking the bastards, seizing their AI and turning them against their buddies for a bit. The geth would be thrown into confusion, and it wasn't unusual for all of them to join in trying to kill the traitor, which gave the rest of them time to take out the others.

Most of the team was good with energy. Electricity sizzled in waves across the field, more frequently and more effectively than bullets. Mordin was the odd man out—he was a professor, a doctor, but his tech seemed to be more tailored toward taking out organics—big ones. _Do I want to know what he did in the STG?_ He worked with Shepard and Miranda. His cryo tech wasn't too useful against the geth on its own, but paired with Miranda's biotics or Shepard's incendiaries it could do a hell of a lot of damage.

But there were just so many. With the sun and the stress, the team was unusually quiet, especially when they came across two more dead quarians. It looked like they had put up a fight, anyway—there were damaged geth around they hadn't shot up. The bodies were still warm, but they were definitely dead.

"This is squad leader Kal'Reegar. Do you copy?" A radio on the ground was still functioning. A male quarian was speaking out of it, trying to reach the soldiers that had been killed here. "The geth sent a dropship toward Op-Two. Tali'Zorah's secure, but we need backup . . . can you send support? Op-One, this is squad leader Kal'Reegar. Come in. Over."

Shepard knelt down and picked up the radio. "This is Commander Beth Shepard of the _Normandy_. Can we provide assistance?"

Reegar replied immediately. "Patch your radio into channel 617-Theta. We're on a scout mission—high-risk. We found what we were after, but the geth found us. They got us pinned down. Can't get to our ship, can't transmit data through the solar radiation."

Garrus patched them into the right channel. "Any idea where the geth came from?" Shepard asked.

"One of their patrol ships found us," Reegar explained. "Dropships started raining geth down on our heads before we could get offworld. System's under geth control. We knew they made planetary sweeps periodically. We hoped going low-emissions would hide us."

It was a soldier's briefing, concise and to the point. Garrus actually found himself standing a little straighter. _Ah, the military. Sometimes you miss working with the professionals. Not that being professional seems to be helping these guys._

"Do we have to worry about the geth sending in reinforcements?" Shepard asked.

"I don't think so," Reegar replied. "Their patrol ship hasn't lifted off again. The radiation blocks all offworld communications."

"All of ours, anyway," Miranda muttered. Garrus couldn't help agreeing with her. This was a geth world now. They'd had plenty of time to develop a workaround.

Shepard kept trying to get a picture of the situation. "What's the status of your team? How many of you are left?"

"We were a small squad," Reegar told them. "Dozen marines plus the science team. We're down to half strength now. Made the synthetic bastards pay for it, though."

Shepard was frowning. "Why are you this deep in geth-controlled space, anyway?" she wanted to know.

It was pretty obvious, actually. Recon. But if the quarians were doing recon in geth space, the rest of the galaxy should know, Garrus thought. The last time the geth had come past the Perseus Veil, the Migrant Fleet had come out of it okay. The humans in the Traverse and the people on the Citadel hadn't got off so easily. The last thing they needed was the quarians provoking the geth into another war.

But Reegar didn't have answers. "You're asking the wrong person, Shepard," he said. "I just point and shoot. Something about the sun. It's going bad faster than it should, some kind of energy problem."

Shepard pressed her lips together, but let it go. Right now they needed to focus on getting Tali out of here. "How are you holding up?" she asked. "We can be there in a few minutes."

"Take it slow and careful," Reegar warned them. "Direct sunlight fries your shields all to hell."

"We hadn't noticed," Shepard deadpanned.

"We're at a base camp across the valley. I left Tali'Zorah at a secure shelter then doubled back to hold the choke point. Getting Tali out safely is our top priority. If you can extract her, we'll keep 'em off you," Reegar promised them.

They'd all perked up at that. "You've got confirmation that the geth haven't reached Tali yet?" Shepard asked.

"Affirmative," Kal'Reegar said. "Left my best men with her. When you get here, you can talk to her on the comm. Every marine on this rock is sworn to protect Tali'Zorah. As long as one of us is still drawing air, she'll be safe."

"Hold position," Shepard ordered. "We'll hit their back ranks."

She dropped the radio—they were patched into Reegar's channel now, but Mordin stopped her. "Shepard," he said. He held up one of the guns that had been on the quarian bodies. "Submachine gun. Light. Large ammo capacity."

Garrus glanced over it. "Elanus Risk Control Services," he said. "Nice. Should be very effective against the geth."

"Not at range," Shepard said. Garrus smiled. _She's got up to speed quickly on the latest arms releases._ "Take it. Scan it and requisition copies for the armory when we get back to the _Normandy_. Until then, use it if you want. Your find, your gun."

"Thank you, Shepard," Mordin said.

"Can see I'm going to have to work harder to use the latest tech," Garrus said under his breath to Shepard.

"SMG's not really your style, last I checked, Garrus. But if you want to try it—"She acted as though she was going to hand over her own Locust to him. "You can see Jacob in the armory before the next mission," she finished, pulling it away and smirking. "Come on."

"You never let me have any fun," he lied outright.

Surprisingly, Miranda and Shepard both laughed—very different laughs. Garrus looked at Miranda, but they'd come in sight of another intact building. The door was working, actively locked. They'd found the quarians.

The radio buzzed. "Watch your ass!" Reegar yelled. "We've got a dropship coming in!"

Overhead, the geth ship fired. These ones were smarter than before. The blast didn't hit any of them—it hit the pillar beside the door. The pillar fell sideways, blocking the door as several geth hit the stone all around them.

"Crap, doorway's blocked!" Reegar cried. "Grab the demo charges in the buildings nearby! Use them to clear a path!"

They all made for pockets of shade, preparing to withstand the next assault. EDI spoke over the radio. "Shepard, I have scanned the area and located the demolition charges the quarian commander mentioned," she said.

"Put it on our radar."

"Done," EDI said. White, flashing points appeared on Garrus's visor. A cargo hold or fighter hangar just ahead, and what looked like the ruins of a residence block to the left. "You will need both sets of charges in order to clear the rubble."

"Of course we will," Kasumi said sourly.

"Now you're getting it," Garrus told her, firing an overload program at a geth to their left. It hit, the geth spasmed, Garrus took it down with his assault rifle. Heat bloomed to the right—a geth with a flamethrower was marching their way, sweeping an arc of fire left and right in front of itself.

Shepard clenched her fist around her omni-tool, and her incineration tech rocketed in a parabola over the geth and into the back of it, igniting the tank and sending it up in a conflagration. It walked around for a few moments, still in flames, before its melted limbs could no longer support it. On Garrus's right, Miranda tossed one geth into another with her biotics and hit them both with an overload program. Mordin took down the last geth—the last one Shepard had hacked to fight on their side, and they moved on.

Garrus saw shimmers in the air of the hangar the first demo charge was located in—he could see one or two uncloaked geth moving in there already, but there were far more than there seemed to be. "Enemies!" Miranda warned.

"Some of them are cloaked! Scan for electric signatures!" Shepard called.

The electric signatures weren't a problem. The problem was that the hangar was defensible, shaded, and there wasn't a lot of cover outside it from the sun. They had to go in close—too close. "Mordin, Miranda, we need suppressing fire!" Shepard ordered. "Garrus, Kasumi, we're backing up the geth!"

 _In other words, Mordin and Miranda are on the perimeter, and the three of us are taking point._ Garrus watched for the energy fluctuation that was Shepard's hacked geth, watched for the soldiers that turned on it, and opened fire. The geth were one enemy where an assault rifle was more use than a sniper—bursts of fire took down shields faster, and most geth would keep going through a single misplaced shot.

Garrus and Kasumi focused their fire on the groups of geth firing on Shepard's hacked soldiers. Miranda and Mordin guarded their flanks. But it was a relief when the last cloaked geth had been shot down and the hangar was empty. Garrus, Shepard, and Kasumi all ran separate scans to confirm before they went in to look for the demolition charge.

The quarians had been working here. Garrus saw dead datapads, laptops. And paper maps. "Tech here doesn't last long, it seems," Miranda remarked. "We need to get out of here."

"Naturally," Mordin agreed. "Objective is to leave. Must find Tali'Zorah."

Shepard had found the demo charge and stuck it to her kit, but Kasumi raised a hand to catch her attention. "There's a log entry," she said. "The datapad still has a charge. I think it's your friend."

She hit play, and Tali's voice filled the stone fighter hangar. "We need a core sample to get a timeline on the rate of radiation increase, but our equipment keeps dying on us. Shepard once used a mining laser to clear some rubble back on Therum. Maybe I can do something similar with demolition charges."

"Only if you're very careful," Garrus murmured to Shepard in a low voice as the recording ended.

Shepard smirked, remembering. Tali hadn't actually been a part of that mission—that had been long before Shepard had relaxed enough to give her basic training to come along with them in the field. The mining laser had hardly been an ideal solution to the problem they'd faced there. _Brought down the ruin we were exploring, in fact. Might be a good thing we've got the charges._

Sure enough, when Shepard remembered _that_ , she stopped smiling. _Hope we don't have to protect Tali from herself_ and _from the geth._ "Let's hurry," Shepard said.

They turned around to leave the hangar, and that was when they saw the shimmer in the air ahead of them. The geth had snuck around to box them in. Miranda swore and let loose an overload program. A geth lit up. Mordin shot it down. They spread out in the hangar, taking cover behind cargo, ancient and more recent. Their position was a lot more defensible than it had been outside, but every second they spent here getting out was a second the geth on the other side of the ruin had a chance to get through to Reegar's remaining team and Tali.

Heavy fire started raining down from outside. An enemy drone circled around, equipped with a nasty little combat laser. "Prime!" Shepard called. "Kasumi, you're on drone control. Mordin, watch the others. Garrus, Miranda, help me take this bastard down!"

Geth primes. Twice the size as the other mobile units, equipped with heavy artillery, ranged offensive tech, strong shields, and armor, they were the elite commandos of the geth army. Their only weakness was that they tended not to bother protecting themselves from attack—but that was because they could kill you in half a second flat the second you stepped out of cover.

Miranda, Shepard, and Garrus hit the prime's shields at the same time. The Collector beam weapon sounded out—its shrill, constant scream was unmistakable. The prime's armor melted and twisted. It turned toward Shepard, but Miranda and Garrus fired from separate angles, heavy pistol and rifle. Both sides of the prime's armored chest caved in. The light on its head flickered and died, and it fell forward to the ground. Kasumi joined Garrus cleaning up the right, while Shepard, Miranda, and Mordin handled the left. In a few seconds they were clear. They headed back out into the sun.

The residential ruins where the second demolition charge was located were mostly intact. Garrus saw multiple working doors, and there was a ramp leading up to a bridge to a second level. The bridge went into the residential block on the right and offered a spectacular vantage point of the courtyard the block surrounded. But it was almost completely exposed to the sun. Looking at it, Shepard hesitated. Readings showed a lot of geth camped out in that courtyard. Was the risk worth it?

"Garrus?" she asked.

"There's a window," he said, nodding at the right side of the courtyard. "If one of us can get across that bridge—"

"I'll get in position and cover you," she said. "Then the two of us can hit them from the side as the rest of you go down the center toward our mark. Miranda, you've got point."

"Understood, Commander."

Shepard went dark and started running. Garrus gave her a good ten seconds' head start, then followed her, up the ramp and across the bridge. His shields started sizzling; the geth in the courtyard below started firing. He passed another quarian laptop, recently abandoned, but ignored it, firing back at the geth with his assault rifle as the window in the building ahead opened, and Shepard leaned out with her rifle. Her omni-tool flashed, a geth in the courtyard below turned on the others, and then Miranda, Mordin, and Kasumi's weapons started up as they started their advance.

A high-powered sniper bullet hit a soldier square in its lit-up head with a clang. It was a perfect shot, a beautiful shot, and Shepard wasn't done. Garrus joined her across the bridge at the window, shielded from the sun, but still overlooking the courtyard. Their position was perfect. A sniper's dream.

They worked together, coordinating their tech to take down geth shields and take them down. Syncopated fire, and the geth went down clean and fast. Trying to defend themselves from Miranda's frontal assault, they left their flank wide open, and when Kasumi started dancing in and out of the shaded courtyard under her tactical cloak, things got even more fun. She was enjoying herself now; "Now you see me . . ." she taunted the geth, sneaking behind their lines to take them down from a third angle. It was almost too easy.

It was all over in about two minutes, and Shepard was smiling as they stood. But when she left the room they were in, she jogged out onto the bridge instead of heading down and to the right, toward the charge. Garrus followed her, crouching to avoid the sun as much as possible. Shepard stopped at the laptop he'd noticed.

"Another log entry," she observed. "Tali, why the hell did you leave it here?" She shook her head and played it.

"It's next to impossible to get accurate solar measurements," Tali had said. "The radiation keeps burning out our equipment. This sun shouldn't be like this. It was stable a few hundred years ago. Stars don't die that quickly."

"Sounds like an actual research mission," Garrus said, as he and Shepard jogged back toward the residential block. "If the quarians are right, they could find out something important here."

"Maybe they could," Shepard said. "But I'm more concerned they're looking out here in the first place."

Garrus hummed in agreement. They met Miranda, Mordin, and Kasumi across the bridge and down a flight of stairs in a corridor that led to an apartment. The quarians had stocked more equipment here, including the other demolition charge they needed.

"Got it," Shepard said. "Let's go."

But Mordin held up a hand, looking around the corner. "Get ready to fight," he warned.

"I'll say this for the geth: they don't give up," Kasumi noted.

"Same strategy?" Garrus asked.

"Same strategy," Shepard confirmed, already making for the stairs.

The geth were inbound from two different directions—outside of the courtyard on the ground, and across the bridge on the second level from the ruined residences over there. Shepard signaled Garrus to cover the yard and faced the bridge. Garrus looked down.

The geth were getting nervous. They'd started to realize what they were dealing with here, and once again, they'd sent out tougher soldiers. Once again, there was a prime down there, and more than one geth with a flamethrower. Mordin hit one of them with cryo tech, counteracting the flames. Miranda hit his target with her biotics, crumpling his armor into a twisted, useless mass with a warp field. She'd taken up position on top of what had probably been some sort of artistic feature centuries ago, crouching behind a crumbled rock face to fire over at the geth coming in on her left. She and Kasumi were focused on the prime now, coordinating tech like they'd done before to bring down its shields quickly. Mordin was firing on the destroyers with the flamethrowers from behind a wall in the corridor at the back of the yard, trying to keep them from coming to the prime's aid. Garrus was helping him as Shepard stemmed the tide flowing across the bridge.

But two, dim, blue lights were moving through the air toward Miranda's position, around her right and up the statue she was positioned behind, firing at the prime. "Miranda, fall back!" Garrus called. "They're right on top of you!"

"I've almost got it!" she said.

Her shields went down in a flash of blue as one of the cloaked geth fired, point blank. Miranda was knocked back to the ground, pinned down. If she went left or right, she'd be in the prime's line of fire, and on her own she couldn't take both her enemies down before they got her. "Ugh! I need help!" she cried.

Garrus made a split-second decision. He pulled out his assault rifle and fired full automatic on the prime, standing up, in full view of it and the destroyers crossing the bridge. The prime, shields down, turned immediately to face the threat.

 **83 . . . 27%**!

Garrus dodged behind the wall, and constructing a targeting solution with his visor, kept firing as its guns pockmarked the stone wall outside. The destroyers weren't close enough to use their flamethrowers, but their bullets whistled in the window, hitting the back wall.

Shepard swore. Her omni-tool flashed, and below, he heard Kasumi yell, "Boom!"

The prime fell down dead, and Garrus crouched again to look out over the courtyard. Both the geth that had been around Miranda were dead. The golden energy field around one that was Shepard's hack was just fading, and Kasumi was helping Miranda to her feet.

There was only one destroyer left in the courtyard below; Mordin had taken out the other. Garrus saw the salarian's incineration tech arc toward the other, and it went up as its fuel tank caught.

Garrus took aim at the second geth crossing the bridge, and in a second, he Shepard had taken the last two out.

He followed Shepard down the stairs out to the courtyard again. Miranda was brushing the dust off of her uniform. "Thanks for the save," she told Kasumi. She nodded at Shepard too. "Shepard. We would've been done for without you."

"As stunning as our heroics were," Kasumi joked, "I prefer to avoid situations like that in the first place. "Here's a tip: When Garrus says something, it's generally a good idea to listen."

Miranda's jaw tightened, and her blue eyes froze. "I didn't see them coming," she protested. "I thought I could take down the prime."

"But they were coming, and he _did_ see them," Shepard said. "We were all at risk for a second there because you didn't listen."

"I don't take orders from him," Miranda retorted, glaring at Garrus.

Shepard went very still. She deliberately folded her arms and leaned back on her left leg. "Every one of the dossiers _your_ organization sent me was sent for a different reason," Shepard said firmly. "Mordin for science, Kasumi for tech and infiltration, and Garrus specifically because he's a talented tactical commander. He's got more military experience than anyone but me, he's got specialized equipment to spot threats on the field, but more to the point—if someone on your team tells you something that could save your life, you listen, whether they're human or not."

Garrus watched Miranda. Her eyes gleamed, and her jaw twitched. "Shepard—" he started.

Shepard shook her head. "She works with me, she works with you," she said simply. "Got it, Miranda?" she asked.

"Understood, Commander," Miranda replied, pale with anger, fists clenched. Shepard held her gaze for a moment and then nodded.

"Good." She turned on her heel and led the way back toward the blocked doorway.

Garrus took up the rear, walking after the rest of them. If Miranda hadn't hated him before, she certainly did now. _But the thing is, she was smarter on Omega. Told her to fall back then and she listened. She's letting her personal feelings—whatever they are—get in the way of her professionalism. Something's up._

Before Horizon, he would have probably left Miranda to it. She was spying on Shepard, sold out to Cerberus, and her people skills weren't the greatest. _But she's too good, and we need her at the top of her game._ As nice as it was to know Shepard had his back, he'd have to handle this on his own, because if Miranda was stubborn enough, her unwillingness to work with him _could_ hurt her willingness to work with Shepard. It was time he and Operative Lawson had another talk.

They'd come up on the fallen pillar in front of the building where Reegar and his squad had been hiding. Shepard set the charges and activated them.

"Excellent!" Mordin said. "Should be enough! Have to move quickly! Large impact radius!"

"Move it or lose it!" Kasumi called.

They ran across the field. The charges detonated with a crash. Rock dust rose up into the air. The door was sealed against the blast, but the pillar was broken.

They walked over to the building. Shepard sliced the door open, and they walked into the building.

It was the best-preserved building they'd found yet, fully shielded from the sun outside. It looked like it had been some sort of power center. Dusty terminals lined the walls. There was a workbench up on a dais, datapads on shelves on the left-hand wall.

"These buildings are quarian," Miranda said, laying a hand on the wall, looking at the files. "This colony predates the geth uprising."

Reegar's team had gone. There were two quarian corpses and as many geth on the floor. They'd sealed the opposite door behind them, retreated further into the colony. _So much death. Whatever Tali's mission is, it's gone about as bad as it can go._ "Whatever the quarians are after, I hope it's worth it," he said.

Shepard had found another log. She activated it, and Tali's voice filled the room. "Our ancestors walked these halls with uncovered heads," she'd said. Her voice sounded awed. "The sun must have been normal back then. So much space. Walls of stone. It's amazing." Her voice turned down then, wistful and sad. "I wish my friends could see it. I wish Shepard were here."

Shepard's head bowed. She tapped the laptop to turn off the log with more force than she really needed to. "She always was throwing that word around," she said quietly. "I'm not sure whether I deserved it."

"You were a little standoffish, but we brought you around. She knows you care about her, Shepard," Garrus promised. "You were the only one looking out for her that year."

Shepard's worry was plain in every line on her face. "Seems like she could use someone to do that now. If we're not too late."

Just then, a comm across the room buzzed. Over the console, a holographic projection of a female quarian was speaking. "Tali'Zorah to base camp," their old friend said. "Come in, base camp."

Relief flooded through Garrus, and Shepard lit right up. "Tali!"

* * *

 **A/N: Time to pull in some more of what might have gone on behind the scenes in** _ **ME2**_ **. Infighting and resentment! I bet gamers only saw a little bit of what actually went on aboard the** _ **SR-2**_ **. How does Miranda go from totally sold out to Cerberus to being willing to betray them by the end, tearfully regretting her desire to put a control chip into Shepard in** _ **ME3**_ **? Can a Shepard who hates Cerberus as much as my Beth does get over that to treat Miranda as an individual who can change? And what, if anything, does Garrus have to do with all of that?**

 **Warning: some of this subplot will be happening off-page. Large portions of it are Shepard and Miranda's story, not Garrus's. But Garrus is definitely involved!**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	11. Nova: Reaction

XI

Nova: Reaction

"Hello?" Tali cried. "Is anyone there?!"

Shepard stepped up to the comm. "Tali, it's Shepard. I'm sorry. Everyone here is dead. Any survivors must have fallen back."

"We knew this mission was high-risk," Tali said quietly. "Damn it! And what are you doing here, Shepard? We're in the middle of geth space!"

Shepard forced a smile. "I was in the neighborhood. Thought you might need a hand."

"Thanks for coming, Shepard. It means a lot to hear your voice. Kal'Reegar and what's left of the marines got me into the observatory. From where you are, it's through the door and across the field. I got the data I needed, and I'm safe for now, but I've got a lot of geth outside."

 _And if I'm counting right,_ Garrus thought, _there's only about five of the quarian marines left. If that many._

They had to get to Tali quickly. "Is anyone else still with you, or are you alone out there?" Shepard asked.

"Reegar had a team of marines covering me when I ran for the observatory," Tali told them. "At least some of them are still alive. I can hear them firing at the geth outside."

Shepard bit her lip. "Would it help if I brought in the _Normandy_?" she asked.

The professor shook his head. "No good."

Tali agreed with him. "These buildings are centuries old. If you bring down heavy fire, this whole place could collapse on us."

"Therum all over again," Garrus muttered.

Shepard nodded in acknowledgement. "What is this research you're after?" she asked Tali.

"It's about this world's sun," Tali explained. "It's aging faster than it should. I can tell you more about it once we've got fewer geth shooting at us."

Shepard grimaced. "Point. We've got bigger priorities here." She examined the door. The lock was sparking. "It looks like somebody sealed the door against the geth. The console's damaged. Can you get it open on your end?"

"Let me see," Tali murmured. "Yes. I can do it." The door clicked and opened. "Should be unlocked now. Be careful, Shepard," she warned them. "And please, do what you can to keep Reegar alive."

"We'll save whoever we can," Shepard promised. "Move out."

The other side of the door looked like it had almost been a hall or avenue once upon a time. The walls here were more intact than anywhere else they'd seen, and the shade was much better. In addition, the sun was going down now, casting longer shadows. But the intact walls gave the geth more places to hide. The long shadows would make tactical cloaks more effective—and with the geth that would be as much of a drawback as it usually was an advantage.

Something at the corner of his eye caught Garrus's attention. He turned his head to see a red spot on Kasumi's chest—a laser sight. Miranda was closer; she shoved Kasumi roughly aside as a rocket blew past and hit the ground, cracking the concrete and sending echoes around the pavilion.

"We've been spotted!" Shepard cried.

Garrus saw the shooter—a rocket drone like the ones he'd seen on the Citadel in the final battle. Before it could dart away, he raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired a three-burst shot. It fell to the pavement, sparking.

There was another, just behind the first. It fired, but they were already fanning out, dodging behind the walls. But after the drone fired its shot, it vanished into the shadows.

"Drone disappeared! Another cloaking field," Mordin reported.

Shepard was gazing across the field. Heavy footfalls were coming toward them—primes at least. "Don't worry about the drones!" she said, gesturing at Garrus. "We'll take care of them. You keep the geth covered!"

Mordin's mouth set, and he raised his new gun to chest height as the first prime came into view.

Garrus ran a scan for electric impulses and saw a drone to the left about thirty meters out. He zapped it with an overload program. The cloaking drones could fly over and flank them, come in from three dimensions, and take someone out while they were focused on the prime.

Kasumi attacked the prime's tech-generated combat drone while Mordin and Miranda worked on the prime's shields. Shepard shot another rocket drone over the prime's head and to the right. That was when the second prime came in firing full auto. No fewer than ten bullets hit Mordin's shields, taking them completely down. He dived behind the wall as a rocket curved around toward him. He raised his fist, exploding it above his head with an incendiary program.

"Two of them! Problematic!"

"Shields are down on this one," Miranda called. "Commander!"

Shepard didn't need to be told twice. In a second she'd hacked the first prime, and it turned around and started firing on the second. As ever, the unhacked geth immediately refocused on the compromised unit. "Concentrate fire," Shepard yelled.

At least fifty bullets from four different guns, including the hacked geth's, pitted the chest armor of the uncompromised unit. It fell to its knees then onto its back, smoking and sparking, visual sensor out. Garrus took out another drone on the other side of the field as the others turned their guns on the hacked prime.

"Enemy down!" Miranda said with satisfaction.

They were careful crossing the field—there were still cloaked drones sneaking around, but the heavy resistance was gone. They found what had been the opposite door to the hall or pavilion, and went through.

It was another gatehouse—someone important had lived in the section of the colony they had just passed through. Shepard hit the button to lower the shade so they could get a look at what lay ahead. A single blue eye blazed at them from across an entire field—atop a towering unit with legs like spears and a functioning energy cannon. There was a flash as it fired.

Everyone yelled at once.

"Oh, God! Colossus!"

"Problematic!"

"Get down!"

Everyone dived to kiss the dirt under the shade. A blue mass of energy flew just over their backs. Garrus felt the heat of it on his fringe. Every nerve came alive, and his stomach clenched as it hit the back wall. He turned to see a blackened crater in the wall, red in places where the plasma blast had almost melted the stone. The old elation at _not_ dying when something super deadly passed inches overhead bubbled up in his chest, and he laughed aloud. "Definitely like old times!"

They crawled for the door to the left, out of the colossus's window of fire. " _This_ was like old times?!" Miranda gasped. Her pupils were enormous, her face colorless.

Shepard chuckled. "Nope! It was worse. Add a dozen charging krogan and a Reaper!"

"Good times," Garrus joked.

They edged out the door of the gatehouse. Fortunately, the terrain was on their side here. They seemed to be at the front gates of what had been a massive building, and the approach to it had been suitably formal—like the Council chamber on the Citadel, designed to impress and to defend the important people from enemies, with lots of stairs and avenues.

They passed into one now, a winding stone avenue that curved around to another stairway down, protected by a balcony. Garrus's visor was full of blue signals—a warning that the field ahead had denser geth activity than anything they'd seen yet. But they weren't alone.

Crouched behind the balcony, overlooking the field, there was a single, male quarian in a red environment suit cradling a rocket launcher to his chest. He waved them over. "Over here! Get to cover!"

They ran in to kneel beside him. He held out a hand to Shepard, and she shook it. "Squad leader Kal'Reegar, Migrant Fleet Marines," he told her, sounding pained and exhausted, yelling over the sound of fire. "We talked on the radio before that dropship arrived. I still got no idea why you're here, but this ain't the time to be picky. Tali's inside over there. Geth killed the rest of my squad, and they're trying to get to her. The best I've been able to do is draw their attention."

Garrus eyed the battlefield below. There were geth on all sides—and too many of them were gathered toward the other side of the field, a collection of outbuildings that looked like it had once been a power plant or an educational complex. "Are you sure she's still alive?" Shepard was asking Reegar.

"The observatory is reinforced," Reegar reported. "Even the geth will need time to get through it. And it's hard to hack a door when someone's firing rockets at you. The geth are near platoon strength, but the colossus is the worst part. It's got a repair protocol: huddles up and fixes itself. I can't get a clear shot while it's down like that. I tried to move in closer, but one of the bastards punched a shot clean through my suit." He indicated a wound in his shoulder—Garrus hadn't seen it at first against the red of his suit.

Shepard pursed her lips. "How bad is your suit damage?"

Reegar shook his head. "Combat seals clamped down to isolate contamination, and I'm swimming in antibiotics. Geth might get me, but I'm not gonna die from an infection in the middle of a battle! That's just insulting!"

Garrus couldn't help smiling, even with the colossus and dozens of geth between them and Tali. Reegar reminded him of some of the soldiers he had known back in the fleet. _You don't generally think of the quarians as warriors, but this one's as tough as they come._

He saw a shadow of a similar respect on Shepard's face. "Any ideas on how to deal with the colossus?"

Reegar nodded wearily. "Standard protocol with armature-class units is to sabotage the shields and whittle it down, you know? Kill it with bug bites. But the repair protocol blows that plan to hell. You try to wear it down, it just huddles up and fixes itself, so whatever we do has to scrap that bastard fast. Probably means getting up close, past that cover."

Shepard put a hand on her particle beam, thoughtful. She tried to look over the balcony, but a geth fired a shot right at her. She ducked, swearing. "What can you tell me about the battlefield?"

Reegar gestured with his arms, indicating approximate distances. "Right side's got a catwalk with a sniper perch. You could wreak some havoc from there, but none of my men have made it past the geth. Middle's got cover, but the damn colossus has a clear shot at you the whole time, and you've got geth coming in from both sides. Left gets you some cover from the colossus, but your ass is hanging out for the geth. That's how I got shot."

"They're moving toward the other side," Kasumi warned from beneath her tactical cloak.

"We need to get to Tali. Got any ideas?" Shepard asked Reegar.

Reegar patted his missile launcher. "Just one! I'm not moving so well, but I can still pull a trigger, and I got a rocket launcher that the sun hasn't fried yet. You move in close. I'll keep the colossus busy. Maybe even drop its shields. With luck, you'll be able to finish it off."

Shepard shook her head. "You've done enough, Reegar! You don't need to throw your life away!"

Reegar started to stagger to his feet anyway. He was moving slowly—whatever he said, that wound was taking a toll. _If Shepard can't talk him down, we'll lose him._ "Wasn't asking your permission," he said. "My job is to—"

Shepard jerked him down again. "We don't have enough people on our side for you to take one for the team! Stand down!"

"I'm not gonna stand there while you run into enemy fire!" Reegar shouted, rage raw in his voice. "They killed my whole squad!"

"And if you want to honor your squad, watch my back! Things haven't been going our way today, and I need you here in case they bring reinforcements!"

Reegar hesitated. "All right, Shepard," he agreed finally. "We'll do it your way. Hit 'em for me! _Keelah se'lai!_ "

Shepard looked at them all and issued her orders. "Kasumi, take center," she said. "Cloak to hide from the colossus, and cover Miranda and Mordin on the right. You guys are going to flank them on the left. Garrus, you're with me. We're going right. Cover my ass and Kasumi's. I've got the colossus."

Kasumi was pale. She was shaking. "I didn't sign up for this," she said.

Garrus reached out and gripped her shoulder. "You're not alone down there," he promised. "I've got you."

She looked at him for a long moment. "Okay," she said. "Okay. Cloaking!"

She opened fire left and right, and geth heads went up, distracted. The rest of them used the chance she'd given them to run out onto the field. Garrus followed Shepard to the right as Mordin and Miranda went left.

 _Of course the path Shepard chooses for us is the sunniest spot on the field_. **87%! 45%!** He could actually hear his shield sizzling off him, a hissing in his ears. The sniper perch Reegar had pointed out had once been an overlook over a garden below, but the sun had long killed anything that grew here, and the field below was barren, stacked with cargo and dotted with stone pedestals that had once supported works of art. The geth moved in a shifting pattern down there. Miranda fired down at them from the other side of the field while Mordin tried to clear their way ahead to the far side of the battlefield. Garrus saw a white cryo program arc over Miranda's head.

He hit a trooper in the middle with an overload and fired at another. **3%!**

Sweating, Garrus crouched down behind an old, cracked planter into a small patch of shade. Up ahead, Shepard had done the same. She leaned out, firing at geth coming up the stairs on the other side.

Kasumi's cloak had timed out. She was lying prone behind a crate, waiting for it to recharge. Two troopers and a destroyer were closing in on her position. Miranda called sharply to Mordin, and an incendiary rocketed over into the destroyer's flamethrower pack. "Nice," Garrus said over the radio, shooting down the troopers. Kasumi's wrist flashed, and she disappeared again, out of danger for the moment.

His shields were at 75 percent. _Good enough._ Shepard was moving again, going for the colossus. He ran after her. She took out a trooper hanging out by a console that had probably once been used to water the garden. Garrus focused on the units coming up the stairs. A destroyer and three troopers. He flipped the switch on his gun. "Shepard!" he called ahead, firing a concussive blast at one of the troopers. It staggered back into the destroyer.

Shepard understood right away and employed her own incineration program. She hit the destroyer dead on, and it exploded, melting the trooper as it went. The colossus was firing down the center, trying to find Kasumi as she, Mordin, and Miranda destroyed the main body of the geth. Garrus saw a ripple in the air as she ran toward their balcony.

Shepard had hacked one of the troopers on their level to fire on the other. She was switching her Locust out for the particle beam weapon, preparing to take down the colossus. Garrus took down both the troopers and crouched beside her behind the balcony. They were across the field, now, looking down the last flight of stairs into the complex where Tali was holed up.

Garrus's visor said there were several units still down there, some of them stealthed, but all of them moving away from the others now and starting to focus their fire up on their balcony. Geth exchanged data over a network, even as they went down. They knew that Shepard had heavy weapons. They were moving to protect the colossus.

"Hem them in!" Miranda called. "Keep them distracted!"

Shepard took aim and fired, trusting the team to keep her safe. Her particle beam shrieked. Garrus saw the colossus's shields rippling, fading. He caught a trooper trying to climb the stairs right in the head. Its lamp shattered and it fell back down. The colossus fired on them.

He and Shepard fell flat. Shepard hissed, but at least one of the others was firing on the colossus now too, automatic SMG fire ripping its shields to pieces. Its head turned, searching for its attacker. Shepard rose and fired again.

"Shields down!" she yelled. "Mordin! Garrus! Help me out here!"

Shepard and Mordin's tech hit the colossus at the same time, melting its metal armor and making it glow. Garrus fired off three high-powered shots at the thing, punching holes through the colossus's inner workings. Blue sparks showered down on the ground, and it made what sounded like a deep-voiced, synthetic protest, enormous, blue eye flickering. Shepard fired her particle beam again. One, two legs gave way, and the colossus crumpled. Its eye went out. Reegar whooped across the field.

Garrus stood with Shepard as Mordin, Kasumi, and Miranda came together in front of a locked door in the complex ahead. He followed her down to join them.

Tali's voice came over their radio then. "Just a second," she said. "I locked the door to keep more geth from getting inside." Just like it had across the colony, the door opened for them with a chime. "There. That should do it."

The building she was in—the observatory, Reegar had called it—was still in excellent condition. There was a ladder going up to a second level, but Tali was on the first, working at an ancient console. She raised a hand. "Just let me finish this download." Her omni-tool flashed, and then she turned to face them. "Garrus? You're with Shepard now too?"

"Surprised?"

She came up to shake his hand. "Somehow, I'm not," she told him. She sounded exhausted. "It makes about as much sense for you to have turned up out of nowhere to join her again as it does for the two of you to be here." She turned to Shepard and clasped her hand too. "Thank you. Both of you." She hesitated, looking at Lawson, and added. "And you as well—Miranda, was it? If it wasn't for you, I would have never made it out of this room."

"Don't mention it," Miranda said with unusual grace. She seemed gratified to be acknowledged.

"If you wouldn't keep getting yourself into trouble, I wouldn't have to keep saving you," Shepard told her.

She was really only half-joking, but Tali wasn't in the mood to be even half amused. She looked out the doorway at the field of deactivated geth. "This whole mission has been a disaster," she muttered. "I wish I'd joined you back on Freedom's Progress, but I couldn't let anyone take my place on something this risky."

Shepard folded her arms. "What were you doing here?"

"Haestrom's sun is destabilizing," Tali explained. "Back when this was a quarian colony, it was a normal star. It shouldn't change that quickly."

"Any idea what's destabilizing the sun?" Shepard asked.

Tali shrugged. "If I had to guess, I'd say that it was dark energy affecting the interior of the star. The effect is similar to when stars blow off mass to enter a red giant phase, but Haestrom's sun is far too young for this to be natural."

Shepard frowned. "A lot of quarians lost their lives here. Was it worth it?"

Tali bowed her head. "I don't know, Shepard," she said quietly. "It wasn't my call. The admiralty board believed the information here was worth sacrificing all our lives for. I have to believe that they know best."

Garrus looked at her. Then he remembered that Tali's father was on the admiralty board. Her own father had sent her to a probable death. _Granted, he ordered all those marines to die first—but, still. I thought I had family problems._

Shepard put a hand on Tali's shoulder. "Do _you_ think it was worth it, Tali?"

Tali shook her head. "A lot of people died here. Some of them were my friends. All of them were good at their jobs. That damn data better be worth it. The price was too high."

Shepard hesitated. "Tali—I know this might not be the best time, but once you deliver that data, we could really use you on the _Normandy_."

Tali squared her shoulders. "I promised to see this mission through," she said. "I did. I can leave with you and send the data to the fleet. And if the admirals have a problem with it, they can go to hell. I just watched the rest of my team die."

Reegar limped into the building. "Maybe not the whole rest of your team, ma'am," he said.

Tali ran to him, clasping his hands. "Reegar! You made it!"

He stood up straight and saluted her. "Your old captain's as good as you said," he told her. "Damn colossus never stood a chance."

Shepard went to him, too. "If you need a ride, the _Normandy_ can get you out of here, Reegar." She signaled Niels in orbit for the pickup.

Reegar waved a hand. "Ah, the geth didn't damage our ship. As long as we get out of here before reinforcements arrive, we'll be fine."

Tali wrung her hands, shifting her weight from side to side. "Actually, I won't be going with you. I'm joining Commander Shepard," she told him.

Reegar looked at all of them very hard. "Hell of a long way to recruit somebody," he observed to Shepard. "Guessing your mission must be pretty important."

"You've heard about the Reapers? They're behind the Collector attacks on the human colonies out here," Shepard told him. "We wouldn't ask Tali to join us now if it wasn't important."

That was probably a lie, Garrus thought. Even before Horizon, after seeing all this Shepard would have wanted Tali on the _Normandy_. _Better to keep your friends close?_

Reegar seemed to get it. "I'll pass the data to the admiralty board and let 'em know what happened," he promised.

Shepard nodded. "At least let us drop you off at your ship. You can follow us out. Too many people have died here. I want you to make it back to the flotilla in one piece."

 _More or less_ , Garrus thought, eying Reegar's wound. He hoped the marine would pull through, but it was going to be a close thing. The wound itself wasn't serious—but the infection might kill him in the next few days.

"Thanks again, Shepard. You've pretty well obliterated the geth, but we're probably best out of here before they come back," Reegar said.

* * *

The quarian ship followed the shuttle off Haestrom. It peeled off in orbit, heading for the mass effect relay and safety. Tali was quiet on the shuttle ride back to the _Normandy_. No one really pressed her to talk. She'd been through a lot down on Haestrom. It was never easy losing fellow soldiers, and the fact that they'd been lost protecting her probably didn't help.

"Make a list of anything we need to requisition for you, Tali," Shepard told her as they docked with the _Normandy_. "I think I remembered everything from last time, but don't hesitate to tell us about anything we missed."

"Us?" Tali repeated.

Miranda cleared her through. "Me, actually. I'm executive officer on the _Normandy_. I'll make sure you have everything you need."

Tali's eyes narrowed. She was silent for a moment, then nodded. She looked around at Mordin and Kasumi. "And—I'm sorry—what are your names?"

Mordin and Kasumi introduced themselves. "That's Caleb Niels. He pilots the Kodiak and gets us to and from the ground." Shepard added, as Niels climbed out of the cockpit and into the bay.

"Tali'Zorah," Niels said, shaking her hand. "Everyone onboard knows how you helped take down Saren and the Reapers. Looking forward to working together."

"Shepard asked me to come, and I'm here," Tali said flatly, pulling her hand away. "But I work with her, not with Cerberus."

Niels's mouth twitched up. "More common on this ship than you'd think," he told her. "Take a look around and keep an open mind, is all I'm saying. Most of us signed up for the same reasons you did: 'cause the Reapers are real, people are vanishing, and Commander Shepard is the only one that's doing anything about it."

"We follow Commander Shepard's orders, but this is still a Cerberus initiative," Miranda told him sharply. "Cerberus saw what was happening and recruited her to stop it, not the other way around." She looked at Tali. "Whatever our arguments in the past, we need to put them aside and work together now. The Collectors seizing humans in the Terminus Systems are backed, maybe even controlled by the Reapers. We suspected it before, but now we have proof."

Tali stiffened. She looked between Shepard and Garrus. "You're _sure_?" she demanded.

"We're sure," Shepard confirmed in a low voice. "Come on. You remember Jacob from Freedom's Progress? I'm paging him to meet us upstairs. We'll get you briefed. The rest of you? I want you to report to the med bay for an antirad treatment before beginning your regular duties. I don't want anyone getting cancer because their shields were down too long on Haestrom. Flight Lieutenant?" she called over the radio.

"Commander?" Joker asked.

"Get us out of here. Make for the Crescent Nebula."

"Aye-aye. Welcome back, Tali," the pilot called.

* * *

Antirad gel was standard equipment on most military starships, standard medication after ops on a world with a harsher sun. Cancer was always easier to prevent than to treat. Dr. Chakwas was gratified that dispensing antirad was pretty much all she needed to do after this mission. Shepard had chosen the right team for the job—and the quarians had gotten the worst of it.

Miranda was the only one that needed anything more. In the time her shields had been down on Haestrom, she'd gotten a sunburn over her nose and cheeks. It was an interesting condition, Garrus thought. One he hadn't gotten a lot of chance to observe in the artificial space stations he'd spent the last decade and a half aboard. According to Doctor Chakwas, lighter-skinned humans like Miranda were more sensitive to solar radiation. When it hit them the wrong way, in addition to possibly causing the problems later on the antirad gel was meant to avoid, it could cause discoloration, pain, fever, and worse—if the burn was bad enough.

Miranda's wasn't quite so bad. She'd been exposed to Haestrom's sun for a few seconds at most, and she'd been in the shade at the time. That she'd burned at all was just proof of how out of control Haestrom's star was. Still, she winced when the doctor touched it and took the tube of medication offered without complaint.

Kasumi and Mordin split up to hit the showers, but as Miranda made to do the same, Garrus called after her. "Lawson."

She paused and turned. "Garrus."

"I think we—" Garrus stopped, then rephrased his approach, making it a request instead of a suggestion. "I'd like to talk, if we could."

Miranda regarded him. "I'm going to clean up." Her nostrils flared, and her lip curled. "I suggest you do the same. I don't know what there is to say, but I'll page you afterward."

"Thanks," he said.

* * *

Garrus had already showered, redressed, and been going through the calibration sequence on the Thanix for an hour when Miranda finally got back to him. He shoved down his annoyance and set his omni-tool to notify him when the calibration sequence needed tweaking. If he wasn't there to make minor adjustments when he saw they were needed, it might mean the gun would need more substantial adjustments later, but they'd gone through the mass effect relay half an hour ago and had left geth space behind. They could still run into pirates, but odds were Joker could outfly those.

He left the battery and went to Miranda's office. It was her home ground, which, since he'd been invited instead of showing up unannounced, gave her the power advantage this time. He was technically a consultant reporting to the XO. _But I think she might need to feel that a little_.

He found her at her desk in a fresh uniform. She'd blown out her hair and reapplied her makeup for a perfect, professional appearance that was only spoiled slightly by the shine of the aloe vera across her too-pink nose and cheeks. She didn't look up when he came in. She just gestured at one of the two chairs across from her. She was typing on her console, probably a report on Tali's recruitment.

"I should have listened before," she said without prelude. "The commander was right. You gave me a warning on the battlefield, and staying put placed us all in danger when the team had to break rhythm to protect me. I was a liability. I should have been more professional. It won't happen again."

It was hard to say how to handle this, Garrus thought. It hadn't taken him long aboard ship to realize Miranda wasn't used to answering to anyone but the Illusive Man. She was hypercompetent, brilliant, and sold out on Cerberus's ideals to a far greater extent than her colleague Taylor. Not the kind of woman that normally made apologies. He could see her resentment of it, too—in the tightness of her shoulders, her narrowed eyes focused stubbornly on the screen, refusing to look at him. It was a gracious gesture, but it was a calculated one, too. A deliberate minor concession, humiliating, yes, but better than discussing the underlying reasons for the misstep in the field.

He didn't want to push Miranda too hard. She was definitely unpleasant, possibly bigoted, and he knew that knowing she was spying—more loyal to the Illusive Man than to what they were doing here—was only one other stressor Shepard didn't need here. But despite all that, Garrus had come to respect Miranda's abilities over the time he'd spent on the _SR-2_. She was a model XO. The _Normandy_ 's day-to-day operations ran like a well-oiled machine, largely thanks to her. And aside from the one admittedly serious misstep in the field today, he'd been impressed with her combat skills too, and knew he wasn't alone. Shepard had asked Miranda to run point on more than one attack down on Haestrom.

 _She's got her pride, and she's earned it. But even if I wanted to push her, though, it's hard to say who really has the authority to push here anyway. Shepard's got my back, informally—but Lawson's got the title and the resources._

But if they didn't talk about Miranda's issues with him now, there was no guarantee they wouldn't show up the next time Shepard needed the two of them to work together. Garrus already knew she needed them both.

Keeping a tight rein on his subvocals and facial expression, just in case she could read them, Garrus asked, "You want to talk about why it happened today? Back on Omega, you didn't have a problem doing the smart thing in the middle of a battle even when I was the one asking you to do it. Is everything okay?"

She stopped typing. For a long time, he thought she wouldn't answer him, but then she looked up and met his eyes. "I read your file," she told him, "Memorized it, actually. I familiarized myself with the dossiers of all the operatives Cerberus recommended for this mission, just like I familiarized myself with everything on Shepard, her service history, and her associates from before Alchera. I wanted to make sure the Lazarus Project and this mission were completely successful.

"The commander wasn't lying. Each of the operatives for this mission was chosen to fulfill a different place in the final team." She paused. "Except for Grunt, I suppose."

"Because Grunt took the place meant for Okeer but fills a bit of a different role," Garrus said, following.

Miranda almost smiled. "A very different role," she agreed. "We picked Archangel for his skills as as a sniper and combat engineer—but there are skilled snipers and combat engineers all over the galaxy. What was more important was what Shepard said—your operations on Omega showed that you were a fantastic tactical commander, the kind of person that could fill a place as a lieutenant and a secondary leader on the team." She lifted her chin then. "But Jacob and I were placed here for the same reason."

"And you didn't know I was Archangel," Garrus finished.

"We didn't even know you weren't human," Miranda explained. "Your team was thorough in protecting your identity. All we could find on you was the evidence of what you had done."

 _Someone convinced Sidonis to give up more than that._ Garrus forced a smile. "So we're back to the turian thing," he said.

"This is a multilateral mission," Miranda said. "Cerberus is obviously willing to step outside of our usual operation parameters in order to protect the human colonies in here from the Collectors and the Reapers." Garrus translated this in his head to mean that yes, they were back to the turian thing, but it wasn't the main thing. He understood now.

"You feel you're being underused."

"Both of us," Miranda said. "Jacob _and_ I."

 _But mostly you_ , Garrus thought. He waited, and sure enough, Miranda's flush turned her sunburn scarlet. Garrus, not for the first time, sent a silent apology to his C-Sec trainer for all the irritation he'd felt during that cultural sensitivity course. He kept his eyes fixed on hers. "Jacob was a special forces officer for years with the Alliance Corsairs," Miranda continued, "And I may not have as much traditional military experience as the two of you, but I have every bit as much training fighting _and leading_ combat operations. It's not prejudice to think that sometimes Shepard should rotate out the ground officers. She's an N7 and a Spectre and has received extensive genetic and cybernetic modification to keep the pace that she does. Asking the same of you, especially given recent circumstances, is just asking for a burnout. You're too valuable to lose. The commander has to see that."

Garrus felt a cold, hard knot of anger tighten in his gut at her mention of _recent circumstances._ "Kept up to date on my file, have you?" he said, making use of all his training to keep his body relaxed and maintain an even tone.

Miranda blushed deeper, but stood her ground. "Keeping tabs on the crew's mental state is part of my job. I have to be sure that everyone is in a place where they can devote everything they have to our mission."

Garrus decided to let it go. Shepard's yeoman, Chambers, was honest about her psychological training. He'd worked out a while back that she reported to Miranda, and probably directly to the Illusive Man as well. The fact that she kept asking prying personal questions was a bit of a giveaway. And anyway, Miranda had been there on Omega. She probably didn't need a psych eval to guess that he might be having some trouble adjusting. "Don't worry about my motivation," he told Miranda. "I was with Shepard on Noveria, Virmire, and Ilos. I saw what the Reapers can do and heard what they did to the Protheans. I was there when Sovereign torched a third of the Citadel and twenty-eight cruisers went down to stop it. I know what's at stake here. Whatever Shepard needs or wants me to do, I'll do it. Let us worry about burnout."

Miranda had turned several other interesting colors during this little speech. Garrus sighed. _What was that you'd decided about not pushing?_ He softened his tone. " _I'm_ following Shepard's lead, not yours," he told her, echoing what she'd said down on Haestrom.

Funny how much a slouch of less than a millimeter, what had to be a microscopic fall of her face could be so expressive. "I know. Like I said, I don't know what there is to say."

"But you have a point," Garrus finished, taking her completely off her guard. "I'm fine. You don't need to worry about me. Not that you _really_ were anyway." Miranda's lips twitched upward, but she didn't deny it. "But we're assembling a big team here. Half the reason I'm useful is because I saw the things I saw when we went up against Saren. If you never come into contact with the enemy, you can't be expected to fight your best, and we'll need everyone by the end of this thing."

Miranda regarded him a moment, then her lips curved upward just a little bit more. "If you won't stand for my bullshit, I won't stand for yours. You aren't getting by merely on past experience, as much as I might wish you were." She breathed out slowly, placing the palms of her hands flat on her desk. "Shepard hasn't overevaluated your abilities." She grimaced. "Even Jacob's been impressed. He mentioned it after your mission together on the _Purgatory_. I shouldn't resent you for doing your job. We need you to do it. I just wish I was doing it a little more often. It's not as interesting behind this desk as you might think."

"Was that a joke?" Garrus asked.

Miranda raised her eyebrows. "It's been known to happen."

"Now I'm impressed." Garrus stood, and Miranda stood with him. Garrus remembered the first time they'd stood facing one another over her desk, with Lawson wreathed in biotics about ready to tear him apart. This time she held out her hand for him to shake. It was a truce; nothing more, nothing less. He still didn't trust her organization and was half ready to bring it down, and he figured she knew it. But they both knew what was more important. Miranda Lawson wasn't the enemy. "And Miranda? If you've got a problem, you should talk to the woman in charge. Niels's advice wasn't all bad. We all need to keep an open mind here."

Miranda looked pensive. Knowing your allies distrusted you did tend to make it harder to approach them, Garrus reflected. But respect was generally a good place to start. Shepard had reasons to shut her out, but there were reasons to let her in too, and one thing both sides of their little feud had was mutual respect. "I might do that," Miranda told him. "See you around, Garrus."

Garrus left her to her reports. He had some calibrations to finish.


	12. Auld Lang Syne: Old Acquaintance

XII

Auld Lang Syne: Old Acquaintance

Breakfast was almost tolerable the next morning, but when Garrus looked at the way Tali had to eat it, it was enough to take away his appetite. They didn't have clean rooms on the _Normandy_. She couldn't take off her helmet. All her rations had to be pureed so she could drink them through a sterilized straw. It always put Garrus a little off. Half the point of any meal was the texture of it.

She didn't usually complain, but she was quieter than usual this morning. She didn't fidget or put together an omni-tool program as she ate, and kept her responses to the crew greetings short. She complimented his ariita, saying she'd missed it on the _Neema_ , the ship she'd joined after returning to the Migrant Fleet. Quarians drank a different stimulant, sweeter. She'd made it for him on occasion as well, but Garrus had never taken to it.

Instead of talking, Tali focused on a message on her omni-tool as if she was trying to look right through it. Garrus knew what it was, and he didn't bother her. When he'd finished, he just said her name and got up to return his tray.

She was absorbed enough that Garrus hardly expected her to notice, but she got up at the same time he did. She thanked Gardner for her breakfast and followed him into the battery. Then she shut the door behind her, and twisted her wrist. The messaging program disappeared, and Garrus saw a familiar scanning program come up in its place.

"It's clean," Garrus told her. "What you say here doesn't go directly to EDI's intelligence-processing centers or Miranda's computer. Can't stop EDI from saving what she hears, though. Only Shepard can do that."

As usual when mentioned directly, EDI chimed in. "My reassurances may carry little weight, but you should feel free to converse normally, Tali'Zorah. Yeoman Chambers tells me that open communication is essential for the mental and emotional health of the _Normandy_ 's crew."

Tali's retort was acidic. "I don't know how freely I can converse knowing that a Cerberus AI is listening to everything we say." She waved a slender hand. "Fine. It's not like I wasn't open about my concerns yesterday in the briefing room. Cerberus already knows I'm skeptical about this alliance, and I don't have any intention of fighting them." She paused, then under her breath added, " _Now_."

She looked around the battery. "You get the whole battery to yourself," she asked, changing the subject. "I have to bunk in the regular dormitory."

Garrus chuckled. "It's an advantage of signing up early."

Tali put a hand on her hip and leaned into it. The move did a good job of showing off her new suit—and how she looked in it. No one except the asari really remembered how the quarians looked inside their environment suits, but most of the women Garrus had seen had _nice_ shapes. Two years older now, Tali wasn't the kid she'd been on the _SR-1_ , but she was still a little young. But that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the view.

"It suits you," she remarked, referring to the battery. "All dark metal and one, enormous gun." He heard the smile in her voice over the sadness and exhaustion. "How are you?"

It was hard to read a quarian's facial expression. You had to rely more on vocal cues and body language with them. But Garrus felt her eyes hovering over his face. He shrugged. "Just great. You and me and Shepard, flying into no man's land to kill a Reaper and all its friends. It doesn't get any better than this."

"You always did have an unhealthy notion of fun," Tali observed. "At least it's not geth this time. We have a _little_ variety."

"And you missed the krogan horde."

"I'll try to contain my disappointment," Tali laughed. "I've missed you, Garrus."

Garrus smiled. Tali had been a breath of fresh air on the _SR-1_. She could do things with eezo and an omni-tool like no one he'd ever seen, and she'd picked up a knack for a shotgun on the road. It was good to see her. "It's been a long time."

Tali regarded him. "Longer for some than for others, I think," she said softly. Garrus's fingers twitched. He resisted the impulse to touch his face.

"Yeah, well, C-Sec got a bit dull. Decided I needed something more exciting for a change."

"Was that before or after they suspended processing on your Spectre application?" Tali asked. Garrus stared at her. Tali's visor tilted down. "I did some checking up when you went dark. You're not the only one who can play detective, you know. And after Shepard, after what you said—I was worried. I don't have so many friends off the Migrant Fleet that I can afford to lose track of them."

Garrus swallowed, unable to meet the bright points of light behind her visor that lit her eyes up for conversational convenience.

 _On Omega, you forget that you matter to anybody else._ _People_ go _to Omega to leave their pasts behind._ Officially, Garrus had gone to shut down a drug ring, but in some ways it'd been easier to stay.

 _Away from a Spectre application process 'suspended indefinitely,' all the places Shepard had ever been and wasn't anymore, the other side of the galaxy from Hierarchy space. And away from the questions from the one or two people like Tali that still cared. You can lose yourself in the noise. As ugly as it is, sometimes you'd rather hear the screams in the void than the ones in your head._

 _But it left Tali and everyone else who gave a damn hanging in the breeze. Now you're back with more screaming than ever and you still have to deal with the questions._

 _Sounds about right._

"It wouldn't have been the same without Shepard, anyway," Garrus answered finally. "After seeing what the Council is—you can't really go back. Thought I could do more good on my own." He shrugged.

"And now with Cerberus," Tali said. The question was implied.

"No," he answered. "I'm here for the same reason you are, Tali. For Shepard, and to fight the Reapers."

Tali paced the battery. "I didn't want to believe it," she said. "That the Collectors are really working for the Reapers." He heard the same dark fear in her voice that he'd felt on Horizon. Like Shepard, like him, Tali had seen the devastation of the Citadel, although she'd been on the _Normandy_ , in the battle with Joker and Adams and all the ships shooting at Sovereign itself instead of against Saren. She knew what the return of the Reapers meant.

"It's true," Garrus confirmed. "We saw their husks on Horizon. Mordin's confirmed the geth were using Reaper tech to make them during Saren's campaign. And we heard one—a Reaper that took control of the Collector soldiers like Sovereign took control of Saren at the end. It called itself Harbinger. It knows Shepard by name, and it wants her dead."

Tali drooped. " _Keelah_ ," she sighed. "I don't know that I wouldn't prefer it if this was all some Cerberus conspiracy."

"That's what the Alliance thinks. That's what Kaidan thought when we ran into him on Horizon. But he was out of action for most of the attack. He didn't see what we saw."

"He blamed _her_ for it?" Tali asked, looking up at him, wide-eyed. "As if Shepard would actually—how is she doing?"

"Bad. She hates Cerberus more than Kaidan ever could, but he wouldn't even let her explain. It's the second time she's had the door slammed on her when she might have had an out, from what I hear."

Tali wrung her hands. "I felt bad about Freedom's Progress," she confessed.

Garrus blinked. "What? No. I mean she already tried to go to Anderson and the Council," he explained, realizing what she meant. "The Alliance isn't even acknowledging she's back, and the Council's given her back her status in name but restricted her to the Terminus systems and refused to offer any support. I wasn't talking about you. I heard about your run-in on Freedom's Progress. It sounds like you had your own problems there."

"We did," Tali confirmed. "The mechs Veetor set up to defend him from the Collectors killed or wounded most of my squad before Shepard could take them all out. I couldn't have engaged Cerberus there even if it had looked like Shepard needed me to do so—but she didn't look like a hostage. She was leading the team. I thought she must be there willingly. I was worried, but my first priority had to be to get Veetor back to the Migrant Fleet."

Garrus hummed. "Unfortunately, things are a little more complicated than that. Shepard's in charge of the team and the mission, sure, but there's a number of things they have in place to keep her from just leaving. We're stuck with them until we figure something else out. Or until the Council or the Alliance decides to pull their heads out of their asses."

"Could be waiting a long time then," Tali concluded. "Well. We'll work with what we've got, and we'll watch her. You and me." She held out her hand, and Garrus shook it.

"You know it. Welcome back, Tali." Garrus felt the _Normandy_ slowing then. They'd entered the Tasale system early yesterday evening, and now they were approaching Illium, where they were supposed to recruit the last two operatives for their mission. Shepard's voice came over the comm. "Welcome to Illium, boys and girls. We should be docked here a few days, maybe as long as a week. We've got some more training to do before our team is ready to take on the Collectors, but from here on out, we'll be focused on preparing everyone for battle. We'll be picking up a couple members of the team here and outfitting the ship for the fight, but I want you all to enjoy yourselves while you're here.

"I'm declaring a shore leave," she continued. "I'll be posting the guard rotation later this evening. Make sure you're sober and present for your shifts. Otherwise, do what you gotta do. Stay safe and smart. Don't land in jail, and don't sign anything without reading the fine print first. Otherwise, have fun. Lawson, Vakarian. Gear up and meet me for a recon party in the CIC in twenty minutes. Shepard out."

"Well, this feels familiar," Tali murmured to Garrus as he began setting the gun to rest in preparation for going ashore. "You get called out for fun with the commander while I'm stuck on board the ship." Her tone was teasing, but beneath it Garrus heard actual hurt.

"Shepard probably wants to give you a bit of a breather after Haestrom before you jump right in," he told her. "And unless you've got guard duty, you won't be stuck here on the ship. Everyone's on shore leave. Apparently."

It would be good to blow off some steam, he thought. Hadn't he been thinking he needed some time to get his head screwed on straight? _Ask and you shall receive, as the humans say._

His hand twitched toward his face again, and he let it fall to his side. _Not that most of the turian women on Illium are likely to be interested in a good time with a dropout vigilante with half a face. I'll probably just go to the range. Not like that wasn't my go-to even before the rocket. Waste of time. Don't know what you're missing until you couldn't get some if you tried?_

Tali had been watching him. "We can find something interesting to do together," she suggested softly. "If you want to. I know _I_ don't know anyone or any place on Illium."

She stood there, wringing her hands and shifting her weight. Tali could hardly stand still for five seconds together. She was almost too kind, Garrus thought. _Which is more pathetic, that she thinks she has to offer, or that I'm going to take her up on it? Everything that's happened, there's no way she wants to go out partying yet._ "Sounds like a plan," he said. "I'll see you later, Tali."

"You can walk me to the elevator at least," she told him, feigning sternness. "We're going that far together."

The two of them left the battery. Tali let him off the elevator in the CIC before heading down to engineering.

Miranda was already in the armory, eyeing the Tempest and the Locust side by side on the small arms table. "What do you think?" she asked Jacob.

"You're not likely to have trouble walking down the street," he was saying. "Illium's no Omega. There are laws keeping thugs from going out and doing whatever they want. At least in the nicer parts of town."

"No guarantee we'll stay in the nicer parts of town," Garrus observed. "For whatever reason, we tend to end up in mafia casinos and strip clubs a lot even in the heart of Citadel space. Usually because some know-nothing kid or eager reporter got herself in over her head."

Miranda made a face. "You're right. You know, the last time we were on the Citadel she tracked down a groundskeeper just because a krogan tourist was curious about whether there were fish in the Presidium reservoirs. It's a waste of time, if you ask me."

Garrus smiled. "Sure, but you really wish she'd stop doing it?"

Miranda looked at him then. Her grimace turned into a rueful, self-aware smile. "Oddly enough, I don't. It's part of what makes her Commander Shepard. She actually cares about all the random people we pass on the street. It's why people follow her." She looked away then, pensive. Then she picked up the Locust and equipped a Predator.

Garrus kept a couple of guns in the battery in case the ship was ever boarded or in the event Cerberus ever turned on them—or they needed to turn on Cerberus. He had a workbench by his cot that he used to maintain all of his weapons and build and test new mods, but on a daily basis, he kept his usual weapons in here with the others. Jacob kept everything in good working order, and he knew well enough to leave the mods alone. He grabbed a few spare heat sinks from their crate, slung his Mantis over his shoulder, and paused to consider the assault rifles. In the end, he went with a modified weapon Cerberus had shipped them a while back—an old Mattock refitted for thermal clips he'd been wanting to try out. If Jacob was right, he wasn't likely to need it, and if he did, he probably wouldn't need it for long.

Miranda had already headed to the front of the CIC. Jacob shot him a sympathetic smile. "She does that," he said. "Gotta keep up or get lost."

"Enjoy the shore.'

Jacob grinned. "Oh, I intend to," he said. "See you later, Garrus."

Garrus met Miranda and Shepard by the cockpit. Joker called out a goodbye as they left. "Don't _you_ wind up in jail, Commander," he yelled.

"I'm not making any promises, Jeff," Shepard called back, grinning.

Joker had docked the _Normandy_ in a clean, white bay in Nos Astra. Usual policy was to leave, find the customs office, and pay the docking fee, but there was an asari waiting for them in the bay accompanied by two guard droids. They weren't impressive—LOKI make. Any real soldier would take the pair of them out in less than a second, but the fact that the asari had them sent a message of power, enough to daunt casual thugs, anyway.

The asari herself was all smiles, though. Dressed in up-to-the-minute asari fashion, a floor-length, short-sleeved dress with cutouts designed to show off her smooth, slim waist, she gave off a whiff of high-class concierge to Garrus, a professional greeter for the who's who of the galaxy, sent by the powerful to the powerful. Someone had noticed their arrival.

She held out her hand to Shepard without hesitation and gripped it warmly. "Welcome to Nos Astra, Commander Shepard," she said in the crisp, friendly, professional voice of hotel clerks, tour guides, and hostesses everywhere. "We've been instructed to waive all docking and administration fees for your visit. My name is Carina. If you need information about the area, it would be my pleasure to assist you."

Looking around at Miranda and Shepard, Garrus could see that none of them liked this much. There was no such thing as a free lunch. All this greeting proved was that not only had someone powerful noticed their arrival, that person wanted something from them. "Why have the fees been waived?" Shepard asked.

"The order came from Liara T'Soni, who paid all fees on your behalf. She also asked that I direct you to speak with her at your convenience. She's near the trading floor," Carina instructed them.

 _Liara T'Soni._ Like him, Liara had disappeared after Alchera. Unlike him, Liara hadn't even come to Shepard's memorial service on the Citadel. No one from the old crew had seen her in two years. She was on Illium now, and apparently rich enough to pay the docking and administration fees—far from cheap for a frigate the size of the _Normandy_ this close to the center of the city—and send a personal greeter to tell them so. _I'm not sure if this is good for us or really, really bad._

Miranda had tensed, too, when the asari—Carina—had said T'Soni's name. The reaction had been almost undetectable, and she'd controlled it in an instant, but he'd seen her shoulderblades clench and a tell-tale flick of her eyes toward Shepard. Her heart rate had increased by about five beats per minute. She wasn't afraid, but she was definitely nervous. About more of the old crew joining? Somehow he didn't think so. Tali had had to be approved by Cerberus's people before she could join, and if T'Soni had been approved as well, Shepard would have said something. No. But there was something going on there. Garrus decided he'd keep an eye on Lawson.

Shepard was taking advantage of Carina to gather information about the area. "Sounds like she's doing well for herself," she said, referring to T'Soni. "What does she do here?"

"Liara is one of Nos Astra's most respected information brokers. Nos Astra is based upon trade," Carina explained. "Information is valuable currency, and Liara has done quite well. She was looking forward to seeing you."

Shepard and Carina kept talking, but Garrus had stopped paying attention. _If Liara's an information broker—that could be one solution I haven't thought of._ He felt his own heart rate pick up. His mouth went dry, and when his palms stung, he looked down to see he'd clenched his fists.

Ever since Omega, he'd been trying to trace Sidonis on his own. Making use of Butler's old nets, Sensat's worms, looking for where that bastard might have gone. The trouble was Sidonis knew all of their tricks and had copies of that same technology, and if he'd never figured out how to use it on his own, he was more than capable of sweet-talking someone else into using it for him. Every one of Archangel's old anonymous contacts had dried up after what had happened on Omega, pushed back into line just like the gangs had intended. And the only offworld contact Garrus had that he thought might be able to track Sidonis had been Lantar's friend first. He didn't think she'd approve of what Sidonis had done. She was as honorable as they came in the shadow world Garrus had operated in for the past two years, and their dealings had made her rich. But Garrus wasn't about to avenge one betrayal by asking for another.

 _But Liara_ —

Would she help? He didn't know. He thought so. She wouldn't like it, but if she was really a professional, she could do what he asked without reading him a lecture. He had Shepard for that. He wouldn't ask her to kill Sidonis for him, just to find him. _In the end, I want to handle this myself. I owe them that, before—_

Garrus was brought out of his plans by Shepard's disgusted sarcasm. "Slavery. Wonderful. Talk about your relaxed standards," she was saying.

Carina's mouth kept smiling, but a tiny frown line appeared between her eyes. "We try to avoid calling it slavery. All indentured servants on Illium have voluntarily agreed to a term of service. Most choose indentured service as a means to pay off debt or avoid imprisonment. A contract holder is responsible for the wellbeing of her servants, and a servant's duties are agreed upon before the contract is signed," she said.

Garrus scoffed, and Shepard's mouth went thin. Any world where slavery was legal, the powerful could use coercion and intimidation to subjugate the underdogs. The people down on their luck, the ones new in town, or with no one to speak for them. And anyone in slavery risked abuse, no matter what contract their owners signed. The whole institution encouraged depersonalization, turning people into assets, property. Things. The worst scum Garrus had ever seen had traded in people. Sometimes the law had nothing to do with what was right and wrong.

Shepard's eyes flashed lightning, but anyone who traveled out here learned quick they couldn't right the wrongs of the entire galaxy. So she asked about the city instead.

Listening to the message under the propaganda Carina spouted was an exercise in translation at least. In between boasts about the cultural diversity of the city and the competitive edge traders offered on the goods available, Garrus gathered that the businesspeople here were corrupt, apex predators that would rip anyone stupid enough to fall for it to shreds; that the major crime syndicates throughout the Terminus probably had a large presence here; and that for all the different species walking around in the streets, the asari living here were the only ones that really mattered to the planetary government.

Shepard looked grimmer and grimmer as she listened to Carina's glowing introduction to the wonderful world of Illium, reading in between the lines herself. When Carina directed them again to speak to Liara in order to find anyone they might be looking for in the city, she thanked the asari politely and stalked away, scowling.

"I hate this world already," she muttered. "Reminds me of downtown back home. All the shiny buildings and smiling faces up where the people go, and right underneath, more filth than you'd believe."

She stopped at the exit to the dock. It was on an upper street that looked over the skyline. The view was just as impressive as Carina had made out, as impressive as anything Garrus had ever heard. The spires of the skyscrapers glittered against a clear sky. The sidewalks gleamed, and shining, luxury skycars zoomed overhead in neat, orderly lanes. The whole place looked like a natural Presidium, which wasn't a surprise. The Citadel looked like the first species that had found it this cycle. This was an asari world, beautiful and treacherous. The brightly colored advertisements against the sleek towers juxtaposed a hunger for power against complacent consumerism.

Working C-Sec didn't do anyone any favors, Garrus thought. He could see it just as Shepard described it. "We were always told that Illium is one of the safest places in the galaxy—until you fall off the grid. Sign the wrong contract, join up with the wrong company, walk down the wrong alley, and it's as dangerous as anywhere else. It's no safer here than Omega."

"You can say one thing for Omega, though. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than it is. In my opinion, that puts it one step above this place," Shepard replied. "Sanctioned slavery on an asari world! Every human country on Earth outlawed that years ago. If they catch anyone at it now, they're locked away for years. At least."

"I don't know," Miranda said. "You have to give the asari credit. Illium is a cultural marvel. Look at this place: the architecture, the infrastructure. Humanity can learn a lot from asari ingenuity."

Shepard glanced at her and inclined her head, reluctantly conceding the point. "It's pretty. I'll give them that much," she said. "Come on. The address Carina gave us is just off the marketplace up ahead."

She walked off, but another asari stepped in their path. "Excuse me. Excuse me, are you Commander Shepard?" she asked.

Shepard blinked. Garrus scanned the asari for weapons. She was unarmed, but that didn't mean she wasn't dangerous. Thessia was about as rich in eezo as any world in the galaxy. Asari were practically all biotic, and it was impossible to tell from looking at one how powerful she was or how much training she'd had. Shepard tilted her head at Miranda, and she stepped closer.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

The asari gave her a little smile. "You _are_ Commander Shepard?" It wasn't really a question, and she immediately continued. "I saw your—I guess you would say your 'aura.' I'd recognize you anywhere. I was asked to give you a message if I saw you. It's from a friend you made on Noveria."

Shepard frowned, and her right hand crossed her body to grip her left wrist. "Go ahead," she said cautiously.

"'Shepard—'"

Garrus saw a flash of orange before the spark hit him. His visor went dead with a shock. "Hey!" Miranda cried out at the same time he did. The pain was over in a second, but when he tried to bring up his omni-tool, a message was scrolling over the display.

 **ERR. 26: RECORDING SYSTEMS DOWN.**

 **ERR. 642: AURAL SENSORS DOWN.**

 **REBOOTING . . . REBOOTING . . .**

The display went fuzzy, and the message displayed again. It was the work of a scrambler, and a good program, too. Targeted, fast-acting. Garrus quickly rerouted the power systems to ignore the errors for the time being, and his visor came to life again and his omni-tool began to function normally. He just couldn't take vid or audio.

And the asari was still talking, in a voice he'd heard before. Her eyes glowed white, as if someone or something looked through her. "'. . . We know that you seek those who soured the songs of our mothers. When the time comes, our voice will join with yours, and our crescendo will burn the darkness clean. Thank you, Shepard. The rachni will sing again, because of you.'"

"The rachni?!" Miranda yelped.

"That's classified," Shepard snapped immediately. She turned her head to look Miranda directly in the eye. "Miranda, please. Forget you just heard that."

The asari was touching her temple, eyes once again an unremarkable hazel. They were alone again. Miranda was staring at Shepard, bone white, more shaken than Garrus had ever seen her, even about ready to throw him across the room. "You—you just had that program, ready to go," she exhaled.

Shepard flexed her hand around her omni-tool, still running the program that had knocked all their recording tech out. "I never know when we'll run into something I don't want EDI to have on her data banks in the first place," she explained. "I can order her not to relay it, but any record that exists can be hacked." She glanced back at Garrus. "Sorry, Garrus. I'm scrambling my feed, too. I don't want anyone to be able to take our records."

Garrus shook his head in undiluted admiration. He only wished he'd thought of it first. "I understand. Just warn me next time! That stings!"

Shepard chuckled. "Only had a split-second warning myself." She turned back to the asari, deliberately putting off Miranda's questions. "Sorry, continue. I'm glad to hear the rachni are rebuilding. Are you somewhere close by?"

The asari shook her head. "The rachni queen is not here. That message is one of many memories I carry from her. I encountered her on an uncharted world. She saved my life. More than that, she gave me a purpose. They are an amazing people, Shepard. The galaxy owes you a great debt for giving them a second chance." She sounded awed. A lot of people were when meeting Shepard, but this woman seemed more impressed by the rachni overall. Garrus had never been too sure about them himself.

In the labs on Peak Fifteen, he'd believed the rachni queen when she'd told him her people had been manipulated years ago. A species with a hive mind had to be vulnerable to confusion and corruption. But in his opinion, that was the problem. Rachni queens did the thinking for their entire species. Without them, the workers went insane and homicidal, but if the queens were manipulated—well, then apparently you got the Rachni Wars. He'd understood Shepard's reluctance to kill the last breeding female alive. Even Wrex had, when it came right down to it. But all of them had recognized she'd made a risky decision. If they could find the rachni now, it would be a good idea to keep tabs on them.

As if she'd read his mind, Shepard asked the asari, "Can you tell me where the rachni are?"

The asari made a face. "I'm afraid not. I don't even have that information myself any longer. After I met the rachni queen that information was . . . removed. It's not painful, but I simply don't remember. I'll remember when I need to, and her caution is understandable. The galaxy isn't yet ready for the return of the rachni." From her expression, she wasn't as comfortable with this as she made out, and Garrus had to admit: it was unsettling that the rachni queen could not only place a psychic message inside this woman's head but manipulate her memories.

Miranda was scowling. "I'll say," she muttered under her breath.

Shepard's eyes flitted to her, but she didn't address it. She kept talking to the asari—if she didn't have explicit memories, she could know something that would give them a clue about where she'd been. Unfortunately, the woman didn't have anything else helpful to say. Her ship had been attacked by pirates, which could have happened anywhere in the Terminus systems and on many routes in the Traverse. Possibly elsewhere, although the only pirates that ventured into Council space were the ones that were very, very good or the ones that got caught.

The only other interesting thing the asari had to say was that she'd changed her career after her encounter with the rachni. Previously a courier, she was now working as a sort of liaison for them, helping them to purchase goods they couldn't produce for themselves. "I am happy to help," she said. "My life as a courier was empty and shallow. Now I'm helping a great race rebuild itself."

Shepard looked troubled. "You were really comfortable walking away from your old life?" she wanted to know.

Garrus saw her angle. _Granted, it has to be a life-changing experience. Saved from pirates and sharing a psychic experience with a race that's supposed to be extinct. Especially for an asari. But we don't know much about what the rachni can do anymore._

The woman simply smiled, though. "You're concerned that the queen is controlling me. I understand, but it doesn't work like that. Our minds were in perfect harmony. I saw their beautiful spirit and their need. I knew what I had to do. If some part of that is suggestion, then it was a side effect from their efforts to save my life. I am happy," she assured Shepard.

Shepard pursed her lips, but it was clear there was nothing else they could learn from the asari. She said goodbye to the woman, and she left without ever giving her name. Probably deliberate, Garrus thought. _She wouldn't want to be traced with what she's doing now._

Only then did she turn to face Miranda, who burst out immediately. "We knew they found a rachni queen on Noveria, bred soldiers that later went insane due to lack of contact with her. We received or appropriated some shipments, and the project was later scrapped when we learned the soldiers were both sentient and impossible to control, but when we heard you'd blown up Peak Fifteen, we assumed you killed the queen. You let it go?" She was furious.

Shepard's arms were folded. "Obviously," she said coolly. "The rachni that attacked the galaxy were indoctrinated according to their queen's genetic memory. Conditioned to destroy. She's not. I wasn't about to commit genocide."

"If they rise up again—"Miranda started.

Shepard raised her chin. "Yeah, yeah. I got that speech from both Wrex and the Council two years ago. It's done now. It's over. And I trust you'll keep everything we've discussed here today between us." Politely worded, it was still definitely an order, and Miranda bristled.

"Humanity needs to be prepared if the rachni prove to be a threat again!"

"Humanity—strike that, most sentient species," Shepard said, correcting herself, "have a tendency to jump the gun. Maybe not the asari," she mused. "They have an entirely different set of problems. The rachni deserve the opportunity to find out what they can be free of the Reapers. Without humanity and half a dozen other species diving in to wipe them all out again. Or put them in more sick experiments."

The last sentence was too pointed to miss, and Miranda subsided. She searched Shepard's face, and Garrus saw everything in her droop again at what she saw. "You really don't trust us, do you?" she asked quietly.

The silence stretched for a moment, then Shepard inclined her head, just a little. "Cerberus? The Illusive Man? Not at all. _You_? I'm starting to consider it."

Miranda's mouth twisted. "I suppose I should thank you. For that much at least."

"Do you want to go ahead to meet with Lanteia alone, or do you want us there for that?" Shepard asked her. That was when Garrus realized this wasn't just a recon group.

"Shepard—"

"It's Miranda's business," she said shortly.

"My business, but if I want _you_ , _he's_ definitely coming," Miranda said ironically, jerking her head at Garrus. It wasn't a question.

"Shepard—" Garrus started again.

"Garrus," she said without inflection, but he heard her message loud and clear. _It isn't up for discussion._ Miranda and Shepard had had that conversation Garrus had recommended, and Shepard had her own ideas about how to resolve their problems.

Back on the _SR-1_ , Garrus could count on one hand the times Shepard had taken Williams out with Alenko. Over and over again, she'd pushed Williams, a human isolationist at best and a slight xenophobe at worst, outside her comfort zone. Shepard had made her work with T'Soni, Wrex, with him—anyone but her fellow Alliance. Shepard had also liked making Garrus work with Wrex on occasion. _We don't have time for anyone's hangups here_ , she'd said. _You don't have to like everyone on this crew, but you have to work with them. You have to trust them with your life._

 _I wonder who she's pushing here: Miranda or herself?_

Miranda looked at him for a long moment, then her mouth did that bitter, amused little twist again, a face Garrus was beginning to recognize as Lawson's physical indicator of a willingness to compromise. "If something goes wrong, it might be a good thing to have a few more people on hand. I'll tell Lanteia we'll be a while."

"We'll call Jacob and tell him to meet us there later. Does that sound good to everyone?" Shepard asked.

 _There's an officer. Get someone to fall in line and then—and only then—offer them the thing that will make it easier all around. Offer a bribe and you're weaker. Give an unexpected reward and they love you forever._ Taylor was maybe the one person on the crew Miranda really trusted. By reaching out to him to help take care of Miranda's business, Shepard was building a bridge across the gap in the crew.

 _And by including me when she asks if Miranda has a problem, she lets Lawson play it like the move isn't specifically calculated to make her more comfortable._

Garrus was willing to bet that Lawson didn't miss any of what Shepard was giving her here, but it still surprised her. Her eyes widened. Her entire body relaxed. "I—yes. Thank you, Commander."

"To Liara's then?" Shepard suggested.

"It'll be good to see her again," Garrus said.

"I—it might be a good idea to use this time to shop more efficiently for upgrades, armor, and weapons we can use on our mission, Commander," Miranda pointed out. "You two go on ahead and catch up. I doubt Dr. T'Soni meant that message for the entire _Normandy_ crew. I'll copy you on the expenditure reports."

"You know what we need," Shepard said. "And there's unlikely to be a shootout in the middle of the trading floor. Keep a special eye out for anything the professor can use."

"Aye-aye."

"We'll meet you in Eternity later," Shepard told her. She waved Lawson off, and Garrus fell into step with her as the two of them headed toward Liara's again.

In a low voice, Garrus said, "It's unlike Lawson to turn down an opportunity to stick her nose into your business. What's going on?"

Shepard's lips curved. "Saw that, did you? The Illusive Man knew Liara was an information broker on Illium when I asked about her at the start of our mission. Said we couldn't trust her. I don't know who's right, but I think Cerberus might have a little more history with Liara than they want me to know."

Garrus hummed. "I don't like it."

"Only way to find out more is to ask, though," Shepard pointed out. She eyed the number on a staircase off the market and nodded at Garrus. They made their way up the stairs.

They passed into a clean stone lobby, decorated in a minimalist style consistent with asari culture. There were no business cards lying around, no signs. Information brokers lived on referrals and discretion, but the straight lines of the furniture, the glass on the door, the uncovered floor, and the abstract stone sculpture on the desk all whispered high-class success and efficiency.

As did the fact that the asari behind the reception desk, an older-looking, elegant woman immaculately attired, immediately recognized them. "Commander Shepard. Garrus Vakarian. Hello. Liara will be pleased to see you."

"You're her assistant?" Shepard asked.

"Yes. Liara relies upon me to acquire useful intelligence," the asari replied. "I don't have her network of contacts, but I supply her with supplemental data. It's really an honor to work with her."

 _So either she's new, Shepard's so terrifying that this woman wants to make sure we know she likes her boss, or Liara's wired her lobby up with listening devices._ No long-standing employee was ever so complimentary of their boss, even if they were well-treated and enjoyed their work. The woman sounded like an advertisement.

"What's Liara's reputation here on Illium?" Garrus asked, probing a little.

The asari looked mildly back at him, not even blinking at his face. _This one's seen a few things._ "She is greatly respected. In a few short years, she's amassed a sizeable network of connections. She could have even more political power than she already wields, if she weren't so focused on her personal goals. But I believe she should tell you more about that, not me." She stood, and extended an arm to indicate they should precede her into the adjoining office.

Liara was standing with her back to them when they went in, on a call that apparently was lower priority. "Have you faced an asari commando unit before?" she asked in a soft, threatening tone. "Few humans have. I'll make it simple: either you pay me, or I flay you alive—with my mind." It was almost a word-for-word recital of Benezia's challenge when they'd encountered her on Peak Fifteen, and Liara's superficial calm was about ten times more effective than her mother's rage had been. Liara hung up on her client, a chill swept through the room, and Shepard cleared her throat pointedly.

Liara turned around. Her eyes went wide, and she blushed violet. "Shepard!" She looked at her assistant. "Nyxeris, hold my calls," she said tersely, shooing her out of the room. The assistant, Nyxeris, bowed and left them alone, and Liara ran forward and threw herself into Shepard's arms.

Shepard tensed all over, as awkward as Garrus had ever seen her. He almost laughed as she reached around and patted Liara on the back twice with a gauntleted hand. _Commander Shepard: ask her to take down a geth colossus and she doesn't bat an eye; try and hug her and she panics._ Liara drew back to hold her at arm's length. "My sources said you were alive, but I never believed . . . it's very good to see you."

Garrus cleared his own throat. "No hug for me?" he said ironically.

Liara reached over immediately to clasp his hand in both of hers. "It's good to see you, too, of course, Garrus! But—" Unable to look away from Shepard for even one more second, she turned her head back. Her eyes were shining. _A warmer reception than Alenko's, that's for sure._

"I get it. Two years gone isn't quite the same as coming back from the dead."

"I'm not quite sure they brought me back to the right place," Shepard said. "In what universe do _you_ threaten to flay someone alive, Liara?" Her tone was light, but the criticism was clear underneath it.

Liara blushed again. "Oh, that! That was just a customer unhappy with the information he received. He'll pay. They always do. Ever since I helped you stop Saren, people have wanted to be my friend . . . or not be my enemy. I've set up a respectable business as an information broker. It's paid the bills since you . . . well, for the past two years. And now you're back. Gunning for the Collectors with Cerberus."

She still turned around and walked away, circling around to sit behind her desk and look at her console. Garrus sympathized. _Easier to have something between you and the full force of Shepard's disappointment._ He walked over and sat in one of the two chairs in front of her desk. Shepard sat in the other. "You've already heard."

"Information is my business now, and if you need information on finding people, I'm happy to help," Liara told them.

Shepard raised an eyebrow and folded her arms. "What about you, Liara? I could use your help on this mission."

Liara tensed, as if she'd been expecting this question. Her formerly glowing eyes hardened, as if she'd shut a door in her head. "I can't, Shepard," she said firmly. "I'm sorry. I have commitments here. Things I need to take care of."

There was something in her tone that Garrus recognized. He knew the sound of a vendetta when he heard it. Shepard didn't. "What kinds of things? Are you in trouble?"

Liara sighed. "No. No trouble, but it's been a long two years. I had things to do while you were gone. I have debts to repay." She leaned forward. "Listen: if you want to help, I need someone with hacking expertise. Someone I can trust. If you could disable security at key points around Illium, you could get me information I need. That would help me a great deal."

 _What does she want? Who's she after?_ For some reason, Cerberus had approved Tali, they'd approved him. They'd approved an assassin and a mass-murdering convict to go up against the Collectors, but they wouldn't approve Liara T'Soni. They hadn't even recommended Shepard try to recruit her, and Lawson, who'd been wanting in on Shepard's operations for weeks, had turned down the chance to meet with her. The Liara T'Soni Garrus had known two years ago didn't keep secrets—he wouldn't have thought she was even capable of it—especially from Shepard. _Is Cerberus right not to trust her?_

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "What's this all about, Liara? Can't you just talk to me?"

Liara gripped the edge of her desk. "Don't you think I want to, Shepard? This isn't because I don't trust you." She lowered her voice. "This is Illium. Anything I say is probably being recorded."

Garrus shook his head. "Hacking a terminal sounds pretty easy. You really need us for that?"

Liara glanced at him. "I don't know anyone else I can trust. Hacking the security node won't get you the data. It just creates a minor glitch in the system. You'll have a short time to find a local server left vulnerable by that glitch and upload the data to my system. I'll leave my own system vulnerable so that the data can be imported during that short time."

Shepard hesitated. "Give me the list," she said. "If it'll help you, I'll take care of it."

Liara sent her something over her omni-tool. Garrus's didn't buzz, and if he needed any more confirmation that T'Soni wasn't asking for _his_ help here, that was it. _More secrets._

Garrus was more uncomfortable every minute, but he stayed put. However she'd changed, T'Soni was the one person he knew that might help him. T'Soni gave Shepard instructions for the hacks. "Thank you, Shepard," she said. "This may help me pay a great debt."

Shepard looked hard at her, then nodded slowly. "Okay. I'll talk to you later, Liara." She stood. "Garrus?"

He shook his head. "I'll let you get a head start on that. Liara, if I could take up just a little more of your time?"

Now she looked at him. "You need something?"

"You might be able to help me out with something, yes."

And there it was. Gun-metal gray eyes square on him, like looking down the barrel of a gun. Shepard looked at him for a long moment. He didn't look back. He needed to take care of this. Shepard had to understand that.

Her mouth set, but she walked out of the office.

Liara regarded him. "What was that about?" she asked him. "She's not happy with you, is she? I don't think I've ever seen you and Shepard disagree about anything."

"You stayed in the lab on the _SR-1_ ," he told her. "It's been known to happen. What I want to talk to you about has nothing to do with her."

"Yes, I gathered it was a professional request. I do have appointments today, but since you're an old friend, and you're already here—"

"That's what I like to hear." Garrus cut to the chase. "I need to find someone. A turian. Around twenty-three years old, colonial markings, blue. Two bands on his mandibles and a stripe on his chin. More muscular than some, brown skin tone, broader nose. Should be easier to find; a lot of us are in service at that age. He's not. He might be working as a merc, independently or in a company. Prefers a rifle with a lot of power and a hell of a kick."

"Name?" Liara asked.

Garrus shook his head. "He probably won't be using it. Not if he knows what's good for him."

"He could make a mistake. If he seeks out a friend, uses old paperwork in a public venue, it could help me to trace him," Liara explained.

"Lantar Sidonis."

Liara had taken down the description and the name. "Last seen?"

"Omega. Around three and a half weeks ago."

Liara looked up from her console. Her eyes hovered over the right side of his face. "Omega. My clients usually employ me to dig up information on their competitors or to look into the misconduct of their superiors. But due to the nature of my work, a few of them arrange discounts by informing me of what goes on inside their own ventures. Several large businesses in this sector have been thrown into disarray lately by happenings on Omega. Trade's been disrupted. Assets have been lost. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

Garrus looked down at his hands on his desk. "What happens on Omega stays on Omega. Isn't that what they say? It's dead and buried and done with, Liara. Let it stay there. There's only one last loose end."

"You're planning to kill this man, then," Liara said. "Garrus, he's twenty-three years old."

The veiled criticism was almost too much for him to take. "And you're what—one hundred and eight? You've lived barely a tenth of your lifespan. Would you want someone making excuses for what you've done, saying you can't be held responsible? In our world, you have to stop expecting age to tell you anything about a person and what they've done. Twenty-three is plenty old enough to be a hardened killer."

For just a moment, her professional composure wavered. Her lower lip quivered, and she dropped her eyes. "You're right. How old is Shepard, after all? How old are you?"

 _I turned twenty-nine the week before they were killed._ But he said, "You get to the point where you can't measure in years."

Liara tried to smile; couldn't manage it. "I suppose you do. This Sidonis—does Shepard know you want to kill him?"

"She knows."

"No wonder she's not happy with you," Liara remarked. Finally, she nodded. "I won't press you, Garrus. She's not stopping you, so I won't either. I'll find him for you, Garrus. And I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Just find him. How much will I owe you?"

Liara hesitated, and then she held up a hand. "Favor for favor," she said. "I can't go with Shepard. You're with her already. You're taking care of her. To me, that's more than worth the price of this information. I know you'll keep her safe." There was a deep sadness in her voice. "I wish I could go with you. But I have my own enemies to chase."

Garrus regarded the former archaeologist. _It's been a long two years indeed._ This was a different woman entirely from the shy, awkward academic he'd known on the _SR-1_. She was sophisticated, secretive, hard, and threatening where she had been sheltered, open—almost too compassionate to survive before. It was almost as if she'd shifted into the matron phase over the past two years; asari lifestage changes often came with accompanying personality changes—but Liara was centuries too young. The only thing that seemed to be the same about her was that she still loved Shepard. That was as obvious as the freckles on her face. "What happened to you, Liara? Back there—you weren't just worried about recording devices. There was something you didn't want her to know."

Liara looked him in the eye. "You keep your secrets, and I'll keep mine. Let's try to keep thinking the best of one another—whatever we might have done while she was gone."

It was so on the nose that Garrus winced. "Fair enough," he said. "Liara. Thanks." He stood, and she stood with him. They shook hands. "You have my contact information?"

"If you still use the old address."

"Only for the people that really matter," he told her. "You'll get me there."

"I'll see you later, Garrus."

"I'll see you later."

* * *

 **A/N: A lot happens in this chapter for a chapter without any combat. This eight-chapter Illium arc we're going into is** _ **huge**_ **; obviously we'll see some major development on Garrus's personal story, but he'll also witness one of the three major defining moments in Beth's** _ **ME2**_ **that I didn't cover in The Disaster Zone. That's not even to mention the subplots—those specific to Garrus himself (and/or Archangel), and the ones dealing with other crew members—both involving him directly and just as a witness.**

 **Good stuff coming,**

 **LMS**


	13. Auld Lang Syne: My Trusty Friend

XIII

Auld Lang Syne: My Trusty Friend

It wasn't necessarily the easiest thing to do to track a crewmate through a bustling city—as opposed to, say, a barren plain in the middle of nowhere. Advertisements popped up on your omni-tool, shopowners shouted at you in the market, the news blared from random speakers. There were always a dozen different distractions and interfering signals, and there were a lot of different places a person could go. But Garrus had occasionally been asked to meet up with Shepard on the Citadel back on the _SR-1_. The principle was the same, even if he wasn't as familiar with Nos Astra.

He finally found her in a more casual area of the market, away from the stockbrokers and venture capitalists and colonial speculators. There was a travel agency, a store that catered to spacers setting up exploratory expeditions, a shop for tourists, and a taxi stand nearby. The crowds were quieter here, off work and perusing the market for leisure instead of a business deal. She'd had a few adventures while hacking terminals for Liara. She told him all about them as they headed over to Eternity, and both of them pretended not to notice how she deliberately didn't ask about his business with Liara and the tight, shallow quality of their usual banter. Liara was right: Shepard wasn't happy, but she wasn't interfering. Garrus decided that was good enough.

The Eternity lounge was a little bit higher class than some of the joints Garrus had visited with Shepard in the past. Sure, there was an asari stripper dancing on the table at a human's attempt to throw a bachelor party for his salarian coworker, but she seemed to be a special order. Afterlife's poles were nowhere to be seen, and everyone else seemed to be dressed and still sober enough to stand. There weren't gangsters or hookers in the corners here, just ordinary people out for a good time with one or two friends—and there was no karaoke machine. Inoffensive, wordless dance pop pumped through the speakers instead. It might be a good place to blow off some steam one evening while they were docked—but they weren't here for that.

Lawson and Taylor hadn't arrived yet, so Garrus and Shepard were standing by the bar. The conversation had dried up, so they were people-watching. Garrus had been eavesdropping on the salarian's bachelor party, amused by the guy's human friend, whose good-natured but culturally ignorant attempt to celebrate his coworker's breeding contract actually seemed to be working anyway. The salarian had moved from protesting about the importance of the event to wide-eyed fascination with the dancer's movement, and his turian friend was neck-deep in his liquor glass.

Shepard wasn't as interested in the multicultural bachelor party. She was focused on a quarian kid next to an older asari matron in a long, professional dress. The quarian girl was nervous, looking all around, wringing her hands. The asari was trying to reassure her, but she looked worried too. "It's okay. I'll think of something."

"You said Synthetic Insights would buy me," the quarian said. "You said it was an easy sale."

"I assumed they would want an AI tech," the asari replied, irritated. And that was it. Shepard was crossing the room. Garrus followed her, ready to back her up if necessary. "Hello, can I help you with something?" the asari asked them.

Shepard's arms were folded. She looked about ready to hit the asari with her nastiest incineration tech. "Have you made this quarian your slave?"

The asari stiffened. "We prefer the term 'indentured servant.' Before you do anything hasty, know that this quarian signed the agreement voluntarily, and her servitude contract is completely legal on Illium. If you actually want to help the quarian, convince the Synthetic Insights representative to purchase her contract."

Shepard made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. Then she turned, and spoke more gently to the quarian girl. "What brought you to do this?"

The quarian girl sighed. "I tried to play the stock market," she explained. "I'm good with numbers, and I thought I had a way to make unlimited money. I lost everything. Then I got a credit line and lost that. Then I took out an illegal loan. You get the picture."

The asari managed to look both sympathetic and superior. It was a special knack a lot of the older ones had. "As part of our agreement, I paid off her debts. Five years from now, she'll have a fresh start and excellent work references."

"Sounds great," Shepard said flatly. "Unless you lose her paperwork or come up with a reason to hold her longer."

Across the bar, Garrus saw Lawson and Taylor walk in. He waved them over, as the asari patiently tried to describe to Shepard how legalized slavery worked on Illium. Jacob and Miranda took up places behind Shepard. Jacob was smiling a bit, while Miranda looked exasperated.

"I don't keep service contracts myself; I'm a contract broker," the frustrated asari was telling Shepard. "I assumed Synthetic Insights would jump at the chance for a skilled AI tech, but they won't even make me an offer."

The woman seemed nice enough, as slavers went. It was a nasty business, but instead of dismissing the kid's worries, she was trying to comfort her, and instead of telling Shepard to mind her own business, she seemed to be trying to leverage Shepard's concern for her charge to get her a place. Shepard seemed to have picked up on this too; her tone had changed. "Why not just keep her? You said she had technical skills."

The asari grimaced. "Quarians' strict health requirements and diets make them expensive to house and feed. I run at a minor profit at best. I don't have the money for constant suit repairs and clean-room facilities."

The quarian was almost shaking. "So what happens if Synthetic Insights won't take me?" she wanted to know. A dozen idiotic mistakes down the road, the girl's entire life was in the hands of her owner now. If she couldn't find a place that could provide for her, she could die of infection or malnutrition.

The asari gripped her charge's shoulder. "A solution always presents itself. I _will_ take care of you."

Shepard looked thoughtful. She had an idea. She nodded once, decisively. "I'll talk to the Synthetic Insights rep and see what I can do," she told the asari.

The asari looked surprised. It was clear enough Shepard wasn't the type to support a slave broker. "Really? Thank you. I'd appreciate that."

"Must you right every wrong in the galaxy?" Miranda sighed as they turned away.

"Every one I can, anyway," Shepard replied. "And this is an easy fix." She waved them off and went to talk to the company rep the asari had indicated.

"And she's quarian," Miranda muttered.

"Have there been others?" Garrus asked, interested.

Lawson and Taylor filled him in on the two other quarians Shepard had run into already—young, stupid, and alone, just like this one. In a bad situation, just like this one. Garrus grimaced. "Tali will tell you it's no big deal, but it isn't that unusual for a quarian to run into serious trouble on their Pilgrimage," he told them. "Tali had it especially bad, running into information that had both Saren and the Shadow Broker after her, but most of them just aren't prepared for life outside the Migrant Fleet. We'd get complaints in C-Sec every now and then—quarians sick on the streets because they thought their parents' restaurant recommendations were just suggestions, one or two that had resorted to theft, a few that had been victims of hate crimes. Ran into one or two on Omega—but most of them were smart enough to avoid that place, out on their own. But ever since we saved Tali, I'd guess Shepard's had her eye out for other kids in similar situations."

"That'd be consistent with her psychological profile," Lawson observed, watching Shepard talking with the Synthetic Insights rep. "I just wish it didn't slow us down. I want to talk with Lanteia."

"What's all this about, anyway, Miranda?" Taylor wanted to know.

Lawson's weight shifted. She twisted her hands in front of her. "I suppose you both deserve to know. I don't know what Lanteia's found out. Things could get messy." Then she told them about how she and her twin sister had escaped their dominating father years ago and Oriana, her sister, had found a new family on Illium. However, Lawson had recently received intelligence that her father could have found Oriana, and had asked for Shepard's help guarding her sister as she and her family moved to a new, secret location.

 _Everyone has a loose end to tie up, some last little thing they need to take care of before we go on this suicide mission. Wills to write, families to look after, questions to answer._ Garrus wasn't worried about his family. _If anything, they'll be better off without the dropout screwup._ All the questions he still had could be answered on the _Normandy_ —or by the person who had given his entire team over to the enemy and had to pay for it.

But Garrus respected that the last thing Lawson wanted to do was to make sure her family was safe. He wouldn't have figured she loved anyone in the galaxy. But interestingly enough, Taylor seemed more than a little put out by Lawson's description of their objective. "You could've told me, Miranda," he said. "Huh. Never would've thought Shepard would be the first person you'd call out to help with this."

"We're serving on her crew now. I needed her permission to come," Miranda protested. "And I've told you now. It was irrelevant before. We all have things—people we want to protect, Jacob. It was nothing personal. I would have thought you'd understand that."

"Think I'm starting to," Jacob muttered. "Well, maybe things will be different now. Maybe going into the Omega-4 relay, you're starting to realize we're all on your side here. Huh. You're the one that said she'd pull us in new directions."

Miranda's eyes flicked to Garrus. "Whether we like it or not. If it makes you feel any better, if I had a choice, you're the first one I would've brought in on this."

 _And she wouldn't have brought me in at all._ Garrus kept quiet. Sometimes staying quiet was the best way to gather information. He wasn't particularly interested in Lawson and Taylor's history, but it was useful to know that Taylor was or had been in a position to expect Lawson to tell him all about her personal information—and that Lawson didn't even trust the people closest to her with information about her past. _Either deep down, she knows what Cerberus is too, or her father is just that bad._ The one meant they really might be able to work with her in the long-term; the other might be valuable information about whatever mess they were wading into.

"Not much," Taylor said, still steaming beside Garrus. "But thanks." He and Miranda fell into tense silence, and Garrus reverted to people-watching, wishing he was back on the ship. Or somewhere else. This was supposed to be his shore leave.

The company rep Shepard had been talking to crossed over to talk to the slave broker and the quarian, and Shepard came back to join them. She slapped her hands together, looking extremely satisfied with herself.

Lawson raised her eyebrows. "Well?"

"It was a PR thing. After the geth uprising, Synthetic Insights can't take any more negative press. They could use a tech, but the last thing they want is to be known for owning slaves. Seventy percent of the galaxy would rise up and scream at them," Shepard explained. "I suggested they buy her contract, free her, and then garnish her wages until they break even. The quarian'll get a cut check, but she'll be free. And Synthetic Insights gets good press for freeing her."

Lawson looked impressed. "Clever. Come on. We're wasting time."

"I wouldn't call it wasting, but we can go ahead and move on now that you're both here. Lead the way."

Lawson led the way to a room in the back, decorated with silk hangings with low lighting. Garrus guessed it wasn't usually used for business meetings, but the suited asari they met there, Lanteia, was completely professional from the crisp, clean style of her makeup to the pressed pleats of her dress. She rose to greet them.

"Ms. Lawson? I'm glad you've made it. We've had a complication."

"What happened? Is Oriana all right?" Miranda asked.

"She's fine," Lanteia assured them. "But you listed a man named Niket as your trusted source? He contacted me, warning that your father has sent Eclipse mercenaries to make a sweep. He suggested that the mercs might be watching for you personally. He's offered to escort Oriana's family to the terminal instead."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You didn't mention anything about Niket," she said.

Lawson waved an impatient hand. "He's a friend. He and I go back a long way."

Taylor scowled. Garrus heard him mumble, "Well, _I've_ never heard of him."

Lanteia scrolled through her omni-tool, taking in names at a glance. "Do you want to bring in any of your other Illium contacts, Ms. Lawson?"

"No. You and Niket are the only two I trust on this," Miranda told her.

Shepard cleared her throat. "What information do you have about the mercenaries?"

Lanteia glanced at her. "I've confirmed that they're Eclipse and that they're working for an organization Ms. Lawson warned us about. I could try to alert the authorities, but so far they've done nothing illegal."

"With Eclipse, it's only a matter of time," Garrus muttered.

"Best not to draw attention to ourselves, though," Miranda said. "You made the right decision," she told Lanteia. "We'll handle this ourselves."

"It's your sister, Miranda. What do you want to do?" Shepard asked.

It was a bad situation, Garrus thought. Oriana and her family didn't know him. They didn't know Shepard or Taylor. But Miranda and Oriana's father had the resources to hire Eclipse to look for her, and when they were paid to secure an asset, they weren't picky about how they did it. They'd go in rough and hard, and if they managed to make contact with Oriana, the family would be scared. _When we get to them, there's no guarantee they'll be prepared to trust us. Best thing to do is to cut off Eclipse before they get to the family, but the mercs have a head start._

They didn't have numbers, weapon specs, or an eye on the area they were plunging into. _We don't even know who Oriana's 'family' is. How many of them are there? Are we looking at parents? Foster siblings? A husband and kids?_ They were going in blind, and Garrus shifted. He didn't like it. If it was his call, he'd hold off on the operation until they had a better idea of the situation—but he understood they didn't have that kind of time. They had to secure Oriana before the mercs did—and before they had the chance to report the situation to her father.

And if this went bad, Miranda's head wouldn't be in the game moving forward. This was what Shepard had meant this morning about preparing everyone for battle—along with recruiting Thane Krios and Justicar Samara, she was focused now on making sure everyone had it together before they went through the Omega-4 relay, just like she'd done with Kasumi back on Bekenstein. And she'd chosen to get Miranda on her side first, work with Taylor to heal the breach between her other recruits and the Cerberus crew.

Miranda was thinking. She held out her hand, and Lanteia dropped a skycar key into it. "Lanteia, we'll follow Niket's suggestion. The four of us will take the car and draw their attention. Have Niket escort the family to the shuttle. Give him full access to the family's itinerary, just to be safe."

Lanteia nodded. "Understood, Ms. Lawson." She turned on her heel and left the room, and Miranda started leading the way out the back of Eternity to a parking garage. Garrus started wishing he'd brought his old Vindicator instead of picking today to test out the Mattock. He hadn't calibrated the scope or checked the fire rate—and it sounded like they were headed for trouble.

Shepard was reloading her pistol. "So I just want to make sure I've got this straight: the plan is for us to get shot down by Eclipse while your sister gets to safety?"

"It's short and sweet, I'll give it that," Jacob cracked.

Miranda rolled her eyes. "Eclipse doesn't know what I have planned, and they'll be under orders to take my sister alive. They won't risk anything that could kill us."

"I doubt that Eclipse will send all their people just to stop us," Shepard pointed out. "Better to just slow us down while they secure their objective. Do you want to give Niket any backup?"

Miranda shook her head. "Niket can take care of himself. Besides, any armed backup just draws attention to him." She glanced at Garrus speculatively. "And you might be underestimating the attention we'll draw. Considering the situation, it might be a very good thing you're with us, Garrus."

 _I hadn't even thought of that. Fantastic._ "Archangel rides again!" Jacob cried, pounding Garrus on the back. "This ought to be good."

"Happy to help," Garrus drawled, but he glanced at Shepard. For the purposes of the overall mission, it was really better if all the gangs in the Terminus thought he was dead, like they'd reported on Omega. It was all over now, but in the months before Sidonis had turned, they'd really been turning up the pressure on the thugs and criminal syndicates infecting the Terminus like a cancer. His team had hit them with surgery after painful surgery—the cancer was self-replicating again now. In five to ten years it'd be like Archangel had never happened—but everyone they'd left behind remembered the pain, and if they knew he was alive, they'd still be looking for revenge. It'd be all too easy to connect Shepard to Archangel's survival, and the last thing their mission needed was another war.

Lawson stopped at the skycar they were supposed to be taking, a sleek, light gray shuttle with white leather seats. She clicked the key fob and opened the doors. "In the back, Jacob," she said, gesturing to the passenger row, where the windows would not roll down. She leaned on her left leg, considering. "You, too, Shepard. Garrus, you take the front seat. If we need to fire back at them, I want you to be able to shoot."

"You know, I'm generally considered a pretty decent sharpshooter, Lawson," Shepard complained.

"Far be it from me to deny it," Miranda said. "I've seen your training scores, and I've watched you in combat. But if we have to shoot, I want them to see _him_ do it."

Shepard hesitated. "You okay with this, Garrus?" she asked. "Could bring down a lot more trouble later on if things go bad."

"True," Garrus said. A hard, cold knot clenched in his gut then, and he took out his rifle. "But when have things ever been easy?"

Part of him wanted to bury Archangel, like he'd told Liara. Leave everything he'd done and everything he'd lost on Omega there to die. But on the other hand— _those two years mattered. The people we helped mattered. And wouldn't it just drive them insane to know they didn't kill us? Not all of us, anyway._

It would be a hollow victory, but it would be a victory nonetheless. Shepard frowned, but nodded. She slid into the back seat next to Taylor. "I'm ready whenever you are, Miranda."

Lawson walked around the shuttle and took the driver's seat next to Garrus. "Thank you," she told all of them. "I appreciate this. I hadn't planned on Eclipse, but they never planned on us."

Lawson pulled up her sister's itinerary—she was departing from the domestic spaceport with two others in three hours—on a private, charter ship to a location that was blacked out in Lawson's own file. Garrus saw a cursor blinking above the description—a password protecting the information. "High security, even for you," he remarked.

Miranda followed his gaze just for a second. "Not high-security enough, apparently," she said darkly. "Keep an eye out the window, Garrus. We'll need a report on Eclipse movements as soon as possible."

Garrus looked over the skyline. Illium's star was setting behind the skyscrapers now, turning the edges of the glass and metal structures crimson. The lights of skycars, restaurants, and casinos blinked and shone in the shadows below. They were making for an adjacent area of the domestic spaceport—where traveler's possessions were sorted and packed away into the various ships.

Above the brown and black cargo yards, Garrus saw five large, armored ships emblazoned with the all-too familiar fiery 'E' of one of his least favorite organizations in the galaxy. "Platoon-strength at least," he told the others. "Maybe more." _Who the hell is Miranda's father?_

"Damn it!" Miranda cursed. "They'll be dropping troops into cargo areas."

The skycar rocked, and Garrus was thrown into his seatbelt. His armor absorbed what would have been a sickening constriction. The skycar controls flashed, and Miranda fought to regain control, but there was no hull breach, no rush of outside air. The vehicle Lanteia had loaned them had rudimentary shielding. Garrus looked at the gunships. _Wrong angle, wrong weapon. The blow came from below—single shot._ He looked out the window and saw his man, an Eclipse merc holding a rocket launcher on the edge of a group. They'd weathered the last shot, but he knew they couldn't take another hit.

Garrus rolled down his window and took aim. Saw the merc's blue eyes behind his visor—and another guy in tech armor yelling at him.

Shepard leaned forward. "They don't want to fire." She gestured ahead at a pile of crates two meters high. "Put us down in that cover behind them."

"Let's hope they really do want to take us alive," Miranda replied.

"Not exactly what I wanted to hear," Garrus said. He kept his gun trained on the trigger-happy human until cover blocked him out as the skycar came in for a landing.

Miranda switched off the skycar and opened the doors. They all piled out, drawing their weapons, ready for action. Miranda closed and locked the doors of the skycar, stuffed the keys into a cargo pocket, and took the lead.

Her chin was high; her eyes were like ice as they rounded the corner. She looked every centimeter the corporate princess she apparently was. "Since you're not firing yet, I trust you know who I am."

The lead mercenary, the man in the tech armor Garrus had seen yelling at the trigger-happy rocketeer, sneered. _Somehow every sneer looks worse on a guy with a goatee_ , Garrus reflected. "Yeah, they said you'd be in the car. You're the bitch that kidnapped our boss's little girl."

Garrus was liking this operation less every minute. They'd flown in blind against forty or more professional mercs to save a _little_ girl? A noncombatant child? They'd needed another team at least.

If Miranda had any idea how bad the situation was, though, she didn't show it. She scoffed. "Kidnapped? This doesn't involve you. I suggest you take your men and go."

The merc looked her up and down contemptuously. "Think you've got it all lined up, huh? Captain Enyala's already moving in on the kid. She knows about Niket. He won't be helping you."

That was even worse. _Are they onto Niket, or is something else going on here? Crap. We didn't have enough information._

Shepard was upset too. "Just a second, Miranda. You told me Oriana was your twin sister."

"That what she told you?" the lead merc challenged Shepard. "No, this crazy bitch kidnapped our boss's baby daughter. He's been looking for her for more than a decade."

 _So she's old enough to move on her own, anyway. Still . . ._

Miranda squirmed under the skeptical gazes of all three of them. She knew she was in the wrong here. "It's complicated," she muttered. "We share the same DNA, just not the same birthday."

The merc pointed an accusing finger at her. "You took a baby from the richest guy in the galaxy, lady. I don't know what your damage is, but you're not getting away with it."

Shepard's jaw was tight. She was not happy, but she turned to face the merc again. "Tell me what you meant about Niket."

"Nothing you need to worry about," the merc said, nodding at his friends. Their guns were down, but they were moving to deliberate combat positions on every side at every range. "Nobody's gonna get killed unless you do something stupid. You walk away now, the girl goes back to her father, and everybody's happy."

Miranda shook her head. "Everybody but my sister. And _me_."

"Should we be talking to Captain Enyala about this?" Shepard asked. Behind her back, Garrus saw her signal Taylor. _Be ready._ He was scowling, but he shifted position slightly anyway. He would have a barrier ready the second this went south.

"You don't want to talk to the captain," the merc told them. "She's not as . . . polite as I am. She's the best commando I've ever seen. I've seen her tear people in half with her biotics, and she's getting paid a lot to stop you."

Miranda's lip curled. "She gets in my way, she'll never have a chance to spend it."

Shepard shrugged. "Putting aside details for the moment, you're not getting Miranda's sister," she informed the mercenaries. "If you push this, it'll go badly for you." She made another miniscule movement at her side, this time directed at Garrus, drawing his attention to a conveyor belt overhead. Hooks suspended from it were moving cargo over the shipping yards. A crate was moving in overhead, directly over the stretch of the field where Eclipse had positioned their midrange fighters.

The man signaled the troops. They all raised their weapons. "Captain Enyala ordered us to give you one chance to walk away," he said. "This whole time been talking, my men have been lining up shots. When I say the word, we unleash hell on your squad, so I suggest you walk away nicely, unless—"

Shepard closed her left hand into a fist. Jacob's blue, biotic energy enveloped them all in an extra barrier. She raised her pistol at the same time Garrus brought up his rifle. Two shots rang out. Hers hit the merc square in the forehead. He fell back with a small, round hole right between his eyes. Garrus's shot shrieked through the rusty chain hanging from the conveyor belt. The crate it was supporting fell with a crash, crushing three mercenaries beneath as Miranda and Jacob opened fire on the rest.

They split, diving for cover from the other mercenaries while Eclipse reeled. "Did . . . did you see that?!" someone shouted, voice high in disbelief.

"She called her Shepard," another one said, by a crate a long way down the field. "You heard those rumors from Omega?! You think—"

Garrus took the shot, and the merc went down, throat torn out.

"It's them!" someone else screamed. "It's Archangel and Commander Shepard! Call for backup!"

Miranda clenched her fist, and a mercenary screamed as his organs simultaneously failed inside his body and his skin did its best to turn inside out. "You see? What did I tell you?" she murmured to Garrus.

"It's nice to be popular," Garrus answered, using an overload program to take down the shields of an engineer trying to flee the scene. Shepard took him down from the back.

Miranda stood. "Come on, we need to get to Niket!" She plunged forward.

Taylor glared after her. "Let's make sure she doesn't get herself killed," he muttered to both of them.

You really couldn't ask for a better place for a shootout than the cargo yards of a spaceport. Sure, the crates flying around on the overhead conveyor belts were distracting, and all the cargo lying around everywhere was as much cover for the enemy as it was for them, but it all just added interesting levels of challenge to a fight. Well, for anyone who liked shooting at range. Grunt, Tali, and Jack wouldn't have been as happy.

Captain Enyala, whoever she was, was standard Eclipse issue, which meant there were a lot of engineers in her team. The fifth time a salarian sent an incendiary over Garrus's head, he said, "I have to admit, I like it a lot better when we're the only ones doing that."

The melted plastic of the crate beside him was black and gooey, and the smell of it burned the inside of his nostrils. A rifle cracked on the other side of the field, a human female's head burst in an explosion of blood, brains, and bone, and he saw Shepard appear on the enemy's flank. "Too hot to handle, Garrus?" she said into the radio. "Stop whining."

"That's terrible," he informed her, taking out a screaming human Taylor had just sent flying and sending an overload program at the offending engineer's shields.

"Learned from the best."

"Can we focus here?" Taylor demanded, shooting at the salarian, missing as the target ducked behind a crate.

Shepard's laugh sounded over the wire, low and thrilling, and an incendiary rocketed out from her position in a trajectory she'd calculated a lot better than the other guys. The salarian screamed as he was engulfed in flames. "How about you wait to talk to us about focus until you're hitting your targets that clean, Mr. Taylor?"

A guy in tech armor yelled at his one remaining ally, a human engineer, and both of them turned their fire on the place Shepard had been. _Rookie mistake._ Garrus's visor was tracking her heat signature—she was already moving again, and, scared of her tech, they'd ignored Taylor's biotics. He hooked one of them right out of cover, managing to pull her into the first guy as he did so. Lawson clenched her fist, and the biotic field around both targets ignited. A full warp field was even more gruesome than a perfect headshot. Nothing could crush armor and twist bone quite like dark energy. Garrus watched the two mercenaries' bodies collapse, turned into sacks of blood and failing organs.

Taylor grabbed a few cooling heat sinks off the warehouse floor. "You want to watch that smack talk, Commander?"

Shepard was doing the same, reloading her rifle to move on. "Did I hurt your feelings, Mr. Taylor?"

Jacob kept the banter up, but his entire body was oriented toward Miranda, straining to go. He was frowning. "Maybe a little. Planning to do anything about it?"

Shepard ran a scan on her omni-tool, signaled two synthetics and eight more hostiles up ahead. She nodded at Lawson to move forward. "Garrus, cue up some of the shit you have on that thing. Seems Jacob wasn't listening earlier that this is a no-whining zone."

Garrus fought a smile. "Right away, Shepard. Does complaining about my music count as whining? Just trying to get a handle on the rules here."

"Saying your music's shit isn't a complaint, it's a statement of fact," Shepard returned promptly.

"Ouch," Taylor laughed. "You want some salve for that burn, Vakarian?"

"Thanks, but I'll just borrow some from Miranda," Garrus said, glancing at Lawson's fading sunburn and cueing up a quarian artist's electronic instrumental from five years back. He'd redownloaded it a couple weeks back. Shepard fell into a smoother gait at once, and the corner of her mouth twitched up. She always had liked this one.

But Miranda scowled. "Can we just focus, like Jacob said?"

"Trust me, _you_ don't want us to do that," Taylor said, his voice dark. "Enemies," he warned, as they rounded the corner. Miranda flicked her wrist and burned out the circuits of a LOKI mech. Shepard faded out, and Taylor threw up a barrier in front of them until they could move to cover.

The mercs were positioned in front of a cargo elevator—it would take them up a level, past the intake yard and closer to the docks. The enemy was set up in arc formation in front of the door. Shepard would take their flank, so Garrus took out the shields of the point man. Taylor took advantage, and the guy went down to three calculated pistol shots to weak places in his armor. Miranda was battering the shields of two others with her Locust; Garrus took out one when he rose to shoot a tech program and the other when she staggered back, shocked by her friend's brains all over her helmet.

The other LOKI went down in a burst of tech energy. Shepard, her shields supercharged from the attack, ran out on the mercenary flank, shooting a spray of bullets from her Locust. The five remaining mercenaries were completely unprepared for her appearance so far from where she'd gone dark. Three of them turned bodily to face the new threat—but Miranda had already taken the shields of one. Taylor took the shot. As Shepard retreated back into cover, Garrus took out a second guy.

A blue flare around him, a current of energy that set his hide tingling, was the only warning he got. **0%** , his visor read. Garrus ducked, but the engineer that had stolen his shields had sprinted away from her two teammates, using her supercharged shields to escape the formation that had killed nearly all the rest for heavy cover on the right. At the same time, a combat drone flew away from her gauntlet toward the left—where Shepard was alone.

As if her retreat had been a signal, one of the other guys—in tech armor, lit up blue and charged toward Miranda, Jacob, and Garrus. Lawson and Taylor's first shots evaporated in his barrier, and then he was right there, omni-blade extended, dark energy bubbling around him. Garrus stood, and the salarian at the door opened fire, full auto at Taylor and Lawson. Garrus saw Taylor throw up a barrier, but he was a bit busy. He hit his attacker beneath the arm—and his biotics went dead. He kicked the guy full in the chest. His insulated boot passed through the tech armor, designed to deflect higher-speed projectiles. He heard the tech hiss, the human grunt. He staggered back but didn't fall, brought his shotgun up, but Garrus was already there. He seized the gun by the barrel and flipped it around. In two quick movements he clubbed the merc with the butt, rotated the gun again, and shot his man three times in the face.

In a split second, he ducked, feeling another incendiary pass over his shoulder. He dropped the shotgun, brought up his rifle, caught the engineer in his scope, her face twisted in fear and hatred, and fired.

Taylor and Lawson had taken care of the salarian. "Shepard?" Garrus called.

She came out from the left. "I'm here. She was smart, that last one," she remarked. "Word's gone out—they were targeting you at the end there."

His visor showed her shields were fully intact—no injuries. "They were targeting both of us," he corrected her. "Trying to pin both of us down."

Miranda bit her lip. "I shouldn't have brought you into this," she said. "This is my fight. We can't afford to lose either of you." Her eyes caught on the dead salarian's belt. She bent over. "Hang on. I've got one of their radios. I'll patch us in, see if we can get an idea of what we're up against, hear what they're saying." She punched the button on the elevator to head up a level. All of them filed in behind her. A new static came in on the line over a human rock classic.

As the elevator doors closed behind them without a sound and the machinery kicked in around them to take them closer to the spaceport, Miranda looked at Shepard. "Shepard, I think I owe you an explanation."

"You owe all of us an explanation, Miranda," Jacob said. They were done with levity for now. It was time for some real talk. "We came in blind, and now there's a kid on the line. We needed time and intel to set this up right."

Miranda shook her head. "She's not a child—and she _is_ my twin, genetically. My father . . . grew Oriana when I was a teenager. She was meant to replace me. I couldn't let my father do to her what he did to me, so I rescued her. She's almost a woman now."

Shepard was frowning. "I can understand choosing to go your own way, but you stole a young child from her father."

Miranda's fists clenched. "If you knew my father, you would understand," she said. "I wasn't the first one he made, I was only the first one he kept. I was brought up with no friends, pushed to meet impossible demands." She raked her fingers through her hair, distressed by the mere memory. "I wasn't a daughter to him, I was . . . I don't know what I was. Oriana has had a normal life. I made the right decision." There wasn't a shred of uncertainty in her voice.

"Not when you kept us in the dark," Shepard argued. "Jacob's right. We needed this information. You have to trust us, Miranda."

"She'll be nineteen this year. She's smart and able to take care of herself. I wouldn't have gone in this way if we needed to have people on her personally. I'm very protective when it comes to Oriana. There are people who would use her against me, but—" Miranda sighed. "You're right. I'm sorry. You deserved to know." She directed her words at Jacob, but then turned to Shepard and Garrus. "All of you did," she admitted.

Eighteen was a lot better than eight or eleven, but it still wasn't great, especially since they were talking about a human civilian, not someone like Miranda. They'd taken out a lot of Eclipse mercs already—but there could be a lot more of them in between them and the spaceport.

They all digested what Lawson had said, and Taylor was the first one to speak. "I get it. Don't like it, but I get it. Not all our esteemed coworkers are as nice as me. Too many like Wilson." He held out his hand to Miranda, and Miranda took it.

"Jacob—"

"Let's just—leave it, okay?"

Garrus could almost taste the regret in the elevator, but Miranda nodded. "If that's what you want," She turned to Shepard and Garrus. "Commander? Garrus?"

Garrus looked at Shepard. He knew where he stood with Lawson. She worked with him because she had to and resented him because Shepard had been sidelining her. He'd explicitly threatened her organization once. He didn't have ground to stand on to complain about Lawson's failure to confide in him, except that tactically, not knowing the details had put them all in more danger than they had to be—and Oriana and her civilian family as well. And anything that needed to be said about that had already been said. _Lawson doesn't come from a background where people can trust one another, but we didn't create an environment for her where she could understand we were different._

 _And when it turns out that maybe you can't even trust your oldest, closest friends, how are you supposed to trust semihostile, weeks-old acquaintances being forced to work with you?_ He didn't like what he'd been hearing about Niket.

Shepard knew part of this was their fault. "Not knowing the whole story's complicated things and put us in a bad position. But I know I haven't given you much reason to trust me. If Eclipse knows where Oriana is, they'll be moving in on her soon. We need to hurry."

Miranda's eyes flicked back to the level indicator on the cargo elevator. "Agreed. I'm a bit worried by what the merc said," she said. "If they've got to Niket somehow, this is going to be harder than I'd planned. According to the specs I reviewed, we'll need to cut through the cargo processing yard to get to Oriana."

Shepard grimaced. "Can you tell me anything about the cargo processing yard?"

"We'll be moving through conveyer systems," Miranda explained. "There'll be a lot of movement. Finding targets won't be easy. We'll need to stay sharp. And these cargo transports carry hazardous materials, so watch what you shoot at."

"And what about Niket?" Garrus asked. "We can stop the mercs before they get to Oriana, but if we have to protect him too, or—"he hesitated, his suspicions nagging at him. _Better if she knows_ , he decided. _We can be ready._ "Are you sure your friend can be trusted?"

Miranda frowned at him. "Of course," she said. "Niket is one of my oldest friends. I guess you could say he was my only real friend. He's the only person I didn't cut ties with when I left my father."

That wasn't necessarily promising, Garrus thought. "Is there a chance your father could be using Niket to get to you?" he asked.

Miranda sniffed. "I'm sure he's tried, but Niket is one of the few people who understands what my father is really like. I trusted him with my life when I ran from my father. He won't betray me now."

Garrus recognized that confidence. He'd felt it. _But when the pressure's on, even the people you thought you could absolutely count on can turn on you, and that's when you're not up against 'the richest guy in the galaxy.'_ He glanced at Shepard and Jacob. Jacob looked doubtful, Shepard grim. "I hope you're right," Garrus said.

The elevator opened. "Let's go find Niket and Oriana," Shepard said.

"Right," Miranda said, moving ahead with Taylor.

Shepard fell back to walk beside Garrus. An alert on the side of his visor blinked, and Garrus realized she'd switched off her radio for a moment. "Stay as far back as you can," she said in a voice too low for Lawson to hear. "You can take them out at maximum range, but let's minimize the number of mercs that catch sight of you and decide they want to be the one to finally take Archangel out."

" _You_ don't let them box you up and pin you down again," Garrus challenged her in return. "Even with a combat drone."

She narrowed her eyes at him—and for a second he thought he'd crossed the line, curtailing her strategy in light of the conditions they were facing. _Namely, a bunch of mercs who want us both personally dead._ But Shepard just nodded. Her wrist rotated, her radio came back on, and she moved forward, while he fell back.

The first shots sounded ahead. "They're on the far side of the conveyer line," Miranda called. "Time your shots." Garrus saw her and Taylor fan out, crouching down among the crates. Shepard took up position behind a trolley between them, where either of them could assist her if needed.

Garrus scanned the area, and found a stack of crates partially around the corner. The angle would be difficult for the enemy, weaving in and out of a cargo compartment on the other side of a conveyer line and coming in from the left—but it wasn't too difficult for him. Using the shadows, he climbed the boxes to get some height. It changed his firing trajectory so he'd be firing under the items passing through the conveyer line for the most part. Garrus scoped out the other side of the battlefield. Two asari, three salarians, five humans.

He chose his first target, fired a concussive blast first to take down her shields, then, to the beat of the pulsing mix playing over their channel, he fired a second shot in between a passing suitcase and a crate full of straw. He saw a propane tank over by one of the salarians, fired another shot, and when the explosion spooked the two guys nearest the blackened, three-limbed corpse out of cover, Lawson and Shepard were waiting to take full advantage.

"He's over there!" one of the asari cried. "Watch the stack!"

"Let's try a little fire!" a salarian yelled. An asari had to pull him out of the way as Miranda's shots puckered the wall behind where he'd been standing.

"Sure, let's," Shepard said in an undertone. Her attack hit the asari and salarian's joined hands. It glanced of the asari's barrier, but she hissed and darted away. The salarian screamed.

"I've got him!" Taylor called, seizing him in a biotic field and pulling him into an oncoming crate. He hit and fell down into the cargo line. His corpse got caught in the works between two belts, but the cargo on the belts kept moving. Garrus saw a smear of blood and tissue on the line moving past where he had fallen.

Garrus heard swearing over the Eclipse channel. Two of the remaining mercs started to fall back—he couldn't get a good shot at them through the cargo. "This is Enyala," came a terse, female alto through the radio. "Keep the bitch back. Niket is nearing the transport terminal."

"You try it!" one of the engineers snapped. "She's got Archangel and Commander Shepard with her! We're getting slaughtered!"

"Archangel died on Omega, you ass. I don't care how many men you lose. Just stall them, damn it!" Enyala ordered.

One of the humans rallied with the two asari. "Eclipse forever!" Garrus shot him right in his wide open mouth. His spine tore through the back of his neck and he collapsed to the floor. Shepard shot at one of the asari—her biotics flared, deflecting the bullet. Lawson hurled an energy field her direction, and she screamed as her own field destabilized, throwing her and her friend away from the impact. Jacob caught one of them in another field, pulling her throat into the cargo line above. Violet blood showered down on the asari trying to climb to her feet.

She slipped, mouth working, arms windmilling. A wild shot from her assault rifle hit a crate passing through the cargo line. The box burst, and blue trays full of pill bottles hit the ground with a crash and scattered. Shepard, with Taylor on her flank, moved ahead, circling behind cover around the cargo line. Garrus leapt down from his perch, following Miranda. He heard a shotgun, Shepard's Locust—a LOKI up ahead warning them to cease hostilities.

Then he caught up. The asari was dead, and two LOKI mechs that had come up on the flank had been disabled. "Two of them got away," he reported. "They ran up ahead."

"Divert everyone except my guard from Niket," Enyala said over the radio. "I'll handle him and the kid personally."

Miranda was crumpling the wrapper of a high-protein bar. "Damn it, I'm not letting her get Oriana." She lifted her chin, tossed another to Taylor.

He caught it, shucked the wrapper in a second and had wolfed it in another three.

Garrus fell in line as they moved forward. "What does she mean, 'take care' of Niket?" he asked. "Like she's going to 'take care' of your sister. But they're not trying to kill Oriana, are they? The goal is to get her back to your father."

Miranda tossed her head. "I don't like what you're implying. Niket is on our side. We can trust him. We have to stop Enyala from reaching him."

"And what if you're wrong?" Garrus challenged her. "What if he's waiting for her?"

"We have to consider the possibility," Shepard said quietly.

" _No_ , we _don't_ ," Lawson retorted. "Look sharp!" she cried, as they rounded another corner. Jacob threw up a barrier as the fire started, and Miranda nodded at the belts ahead. While they'd had to go around the last one, there were maintenance steps here. "We can cut down through the cargo line," she suggested.

"Hell, yeah," Taylor crowed, plunging forward, Miranda at his heels. _He's just been waiting for a chance to get in close._ Shepard nodded at Garrus, and the two of them broke apart to come at the enemy from two other sides. Garrus took up position on a trolley, shoving a fuel container down into the cargo line before someone else could take advantage. Shepard crouched behind an armored crate—weapons, probably, or climate-controlled pharmaceuticals. Miranda skated through the enemy on the other side, taking down shields with tech and automatic fire for Jacob, who went at them with his shotgun or a biotic punch—even messier, but just as effective. They looked like they had a handle on it, for the most part, but Garrus saw a sniper on the far left aiming at Lawson. He hit the woman with a concussive blast. She went down, and when she started climbing to her feet, it was only to meet a bullet from Shepard. Her blood spurted up as her body fell down—and this time she didn't get up.

Shepard vaulted over her crate and down through the cargo line. Garrus followed her. They were sprinting now, racing to get to Niket and Oriana before Enyala—whatever she wanted to do with them. Garrus collapsed his Mantis and pulled out the Mattock. It'd be more effective moving at this speed.

"Eclipse operatives have attempted to delay you by disabling the elevators." EDI's voice was calm and cool over the beat of the drums. "I am overriding their lockdown."

"Thanks, EDI!" Shepard panted.

"You are welcome, Shepard," the AI said. She sounded pleased. _I have got to stop anthropomorphizing her. If she's pleased, it's just because she's programmed to like helping us._

They rounded the corner, and Garrus saw the borders of a queue. They were leaving the cargo yards behind, heading toward the administration level, where occasionally the spaceport workers would need to wait in lines. Six humans and salarians were crouched inside the queue, huddled together, eyes bright and afraid. But on the signal of one of the salarians, the formation burst like a star, keeping mobile instead of waiting to be shot in the comparatively open space. It would buy them only a few more seconds.

"Combat drone engaged!" a salarian yelled, tenor voice breaking with fear and anger.

Garrus rotated his left wrist. "And disengaged," he muttered. He shot two bursts at the salarian, taking out his shields, then jumped sideways into a somersault as no less than three of the six they were facing turned their weapons on him personally. _Crap._

Taylor charged into the gap. He tried to flare, but his biotics flickered and died. He grunted as his shields absorbed two, four shots before one of the metal fuel containers lying around came flying—hurled physically, not biotically—into one of salarians firing their direction. An incendiary attack followed immediately, and Garrus dived forward, seized Taylor's ankle, and threw him bodily back from the explosion.

The guns turned on Shepard then—standing over by the trolley where the fuel container had come from, but Garrus, retreating in front of Taylor while Taylor's shields regenerated, fired at one of the distracted idiots that had gone for the diversion instead of shooting at the two men down. Lawson was on another, and as Shepard faded out, the remaining mercenaries swore as they realized what they had done.

Garrus and Taylor had reached the last pieces of cargo, and they knelt behind cover. The last salarian still behind the queue fired at them, but he was closer to Miranda, and teeth bared, she reached down, seized his arm, and turning with her entire body, threw him into the wall beside the elevator. Dazed, he slid down, and she fired three bullets into his brain. On the other side of the room, Shepard decloaked behind a human engineer and thrust her omni-tool up through his back. Her pistol was already pointed at the last merc—but Garrus took the shot before she could.

He went down, and Shepard pushed the impaled merc off of her, rolling her eyes. "Showboat turian," she muttered.

Garrus stood. "You love it."

"That was some nice coordination there," Taylor said, standing with him and extending his hand to Garrus. "Saved my ass again, Vakarian. Shepard."

Garrus shook Taylor's hand. "You saved mine first." The two of them followed Miranda into the elevator that would take them up to the administrative level below the docks.

"Niket has reached the terminal," Enyala reported over the radio. "He'll switch the family over to our transport."

 _And that just about does it for the combat high._ Garrus killed the music. Shepard glanced at him then back at Miranda, who blanched white as if she'd just been kicked in the gut.

"Niket? But—that can't be right!


	14. Auld Lang Syne: A Cup of Kindness

XIV

Auld Lang Syne: A Cup of Kindness

Watching Miranda now, there was a bitter taste in Garrus's mouth, a hot ball of hate in his chest and throat. _Not for her_. Lawson looked lost, dazed. Her face was drawn, and she paced the elevator floor, muttering to herself. "Maybe the captain knows we're listening in and she's feeding misinformation about Niket making a switch. Or maybe it means something else. Niket wouldn't do that." She kicked the elevator console, frustrated. "Dammit, why won't this thing go any faster!?"

 _It's like getting your legs kicked out from under you. Like falling off a cliff._ Shepard leaned up against the wall. "You're reaching, Miranda, and you know it," she said quietly. "I think it's a pattern for you. What makes you so sure Niket wouldn't turn on you?"

Miranda looked up, furious. "He could have turned on me when I ran away! I'm sure my father tried to buy him off. If he didn't do it then, why would he do it now?"

 _Why?_ There was never an answer that was good enough. No excuse that could cut it. But the timing—Garrus glanced at Taylor. Lawson had played things so close to her chest that the one guy she trusted on the _Normandy_ , her friend, hadn't known she had a sister. Had she been any more open with Niket? "Did Niket know that you took Oriana from your father?" he asked.

Miranda had been tearing a hole in the floor with her high-heeled boots. Now her pacing stopped dead. "No, he just found out about that recently," she answered. "It was too personal to involve someone else. I never really thought about it . . ." her brow knit. "But maybe . . . no." She swept her arms out and turned away. "He'd have to understand why I did it," she told them. "He knows what I went through."

"I guess we'll find out when we catch up with him," Taylor said. "You probably shouldn't sweat it too much until then."

Miranda tried to smile. "It's me. Do you really think I could manage it?" The elevator dinged, and she set her shoulders. "Let's go. I want to have a word with this Captain Enyala."

"We're with you," Jacob promised her.

They all followed Miranda out of the elevator. Garrus saw the final cargo elevator over on the other side—where spaceport workers would usually take the luggage assigned to a particular voyage to its hold. On the right, there was another queue and a window, but it was closed. There were no sirens, but a violet light was flashing on the wall. _Lockdown._ They'd set off alarms in the cargo yards, personnel had been evacuated, and the ships were probably shut down until a security team made a sweep and gave the all clear. _One advantage of ops on hub worlds with legal systems—even dysfunctional ones. Less risk civilians will get caught in the crossfire._

The checked crates and luggage were stacked around the waiting room. They'd never made it up to the waiting ship above. And in the center of the room, a human man with auburn hair was arguing with an asari transport official he'd somehow managed to find or detain. He was unarmed, seemed to be nearer forty than thirty. "Listen to me," he said. "I've got authorization to change their booking."

The asari in the transportation uniform was examining a map on a datapad. "I'm sorry sir," she said without even looking at him. "We're under security lockdown. Until the situation in the cargo terminal is resolved, no passengers can be rebooked."

There was another asari sitting on a crate nearby. Her scalp was dyed red, she wore an Eclipse uniform, and she was examining a mean shotgun. Garrus's visor picked up illegal shredder mods on it from here. "This isn't worth my time, Niket," the asari complained. Garrus recognized Enyala's voice. "I get paid regardless of how the girl gets there."

Some of her mercs had had standards, it seemed. The guy at the entrance to the cargo yard had possessed some sort of code, but Garrus could tell at a glance Enyala was more of the same scum he'd seen on Omega. Oh, she'd worked within the law so far, because it was easy. But she no more cared about Lawson's kid sister than any other package in the yard.

"No," Niket protested. "I was told that I could handle this my way. We're not traumatizing the family any more than we—" Miranda cleared her throat. He turned, saw her. Squinted. His entire face changed. "Miri."

Enyala sat up straight. "This should be fun." The transportation official took in the scene—four people armed and ready for a fight coming in. She started to back away, turned. Ran. Without so much as a blink, Enyala turned and shot her in the back. Fury, cold as ice, filled Garrus's head. The transportation official had been completely uninvolved, just doing her job. An unarmed civilian. But he could see other Eclipse mercs filing in around the yard—Enyala's guards. He and Taylor faced out, keeping them covered, while Miranda stared down Niket.

"Niket. You sold me out."

"How do you want to handle this, Miranda?" Shepard said, keeping an eye on the incoming mercs.

Miranda wasn't listening to her. "Why, Niket?" she demanded, raging at the helpless-looking man. "You were my friend. You helped me get away from my father."

Niket looked torn between guilt and resolve. "Yes, because you wanted to leave," he said firmly. "That was your choice. But if I'd known that you'd stolen a baby . . ."

"I didn't steal her!" Miranda cried. "I rescued her!"

Niket's face contorted, colored. "From a life of wealth and happiness? You weren't saving her! You were getting back at your father!"

 _That was it, then._ Lawson may have thought Niket understood her, and he probably had been her friend, but when she'd run away from her father, he hadn't understood that at all. _Probably even felt_ she _betrayed_ him _. Doubly so when he found out about Oriana._

Shepard was trying to reason with him. "Whether or not you agree with Miranda, Oriana has been with her family for years now," she said.

"Her father can still give her a better life," Niket argued.

"You don't know what my father wants for her!" Miranda snapped.

Niket raised his chin. "I know that I've been poor, Miri. I didn't much care for it."

Miranda gestured toward Enyala. "He wants to take a girl away from the only family she's ever known. Doesn't that tell you what he really is?" she challenged him.

Shepard interrupted again, calmly. "How did Miranda's father turn you?" she asked.

Niket kept his eyes on Miranda, and directed his answer to her. "They told me you'd kidnapped your baby sister all those years ago. They said I could help get her back peacefully, no trauma to the family." His eyes danced with anger. "I told them you'd never do that; they could go to hell! Then you finally told me what you'd done. I called them back that night."

Miranda's eyes shone. She was close to tears. Garrus imagined the sick feeling in her stomach, the disbelief as she looked at someone she'd trusted—and had betrayed her. "Why didn't you call _me_ , Niket?!" she asked him. "We've been through a lot. You could've at least let me explain!"

Niket's fists clenched at his sides. "I deserved to know that you'd stolen your sister, Miri!" he retorted. "I deserved to know that you were with Cerberus! But I had to hear it from your father first!"

He was so self-righteous, but Shepard cut to the chase. "How much did he pay you?" she said flatly.

Niket's face fell, and the guilt and regret came back to his face. "A great deal," he muttered finally.

Lawson's old friend was no Sidonis. He was no murderer. Unlike Enyala, it was possible there really was a part of him that thought he was trying to do the right thing for Miranda's sister. But at bottom, he'd betrayed her for petty revenge and a big payout. Taylor was mad about Miranda's secrets too—but in the end he was trusting that she had reasons for what she did. He wasn't running around trying to get her back for not telling him the things he thought she should have.

Tears were running down Miranda's face. Her gun shook in her hands. "Damn it, Niket! You were the only one I trusted from that life."

Niket couldn't meet her eyes. "He knew you felt that way. That's why he bought me."

"So you just took his money," Miranda spat.

He flared up again. "Don't get holy with me, Miri. You took his money for years."

"What about you?" Shepard asked Enyala. "You're really okay with this? I knew Eclipse was willing to get their hands dirty, but kidnapping a kid?"

"Don't waste your time, Shepard," Garrus told her under his breath.

Enyala stood. "I'm not stealing her. I'm rescuing her," she told Shepard. She glanced at them all. "And there's nothing you or Archangel or Mr. Dark and Handsome can do about it. Come on, Niket. Let's finish this bitch off and get out of here."

Miranda's biotics flared. "Take your best shot."

Enyala's lip curled. "I was just waiting for you to finish getting dressed. Or does Cerberus really let you whore around in that outfit?"

Miranda tensed, but Shepard held up a hand. "If you're working for Miranda's father, that means he knows about Oriana. We need to find a new solution."

Niket slumped. "Miranda's father has no information about Oriana," he admitted. "I knew you had spy programs in your father's system, Miri, so I kept it private. I took his mercs and tracked her down on my own. I'm the only one who knows."

Miranda looked sick, and three more tears slipped down her face, but her gun hand was steady now. "Which means that you're the only loose end," she said. "This isn't how I wanted it to end, Niket—"

She raised her weapon, and Shepard lunged over and seized her wrist. Miranda gasped in surprise, and threw her off, outraged at the interruption. "You don't want to do this!" Shepard told her.

"This has to end here, Shepard," Miranda told her. "My father will keep trying to find Oriana."

Shepard shot a glance at the human man opposite them, challenging him. He seemed to be a halfway decent guy, and she wanted to save him, if she could. "Maybe Niket can help. Talk to your father, just say you got here first."

Niket knew he couldn't run. Enyala and her Eclipse had him covered on the one side, all of their people had him covered on the other. He stammered for a moment, then agreed. "I'll tell him that you hid her, that I don't know where she is," he finally said.

Miranda stared at him for a long, long moment. Her blue eyes sparked with biotics and tears. "I never want to see you again, Niket—"

She was cut off when Enyala, seeing she could no longer count on her partner, abruptly put an end to the partnership. His face contorted with surprise and pain right before he fell forward to the floor. Blood pooled beneath his unarmored torso. Garrus saw his completely severed spine in the blast wound.

"Done," Enyala said curtly. "Now, if you don't mind, I have a shipment to deliver."

Miranda lit up blue, enraged. "You'll die for that, bitch!" she cried. She threw a roiling ball of dark energy at Enyala, but Enyala diverted it with her own biotics, throwing it back at Shepard and Garrus. They dived to the side, and Taylor charged forward, firing his shotgun at the empty air. Enyala had already hurled herself behind cover, and her people had opened fire.

Shepard dropped low, her omni-tool flashed, and she faded from view. Garrus saw her heat signature moving swiftly to the right flank, so he went left. He weighed the Mattock in his hands, peering through the scope. It had a kick almost equal to his sniper rifle—fire too rapidly, and he'd lose stability. Three of the guards were stationed by the cargo elevator, one crouched low behind a trunk with a rifle. Garrus zigzagged, moving at a run that was harder to trace than a jog. He took up position by the left wall. A concussive blast knocked the sniper out of cover, took out his shields. He heard a rifle shot across the room—Shepard's Mantis, heard competing shotgun fire. He fell flat, feeling an asari's biotic attack ripple over his head, came up on one knee, took aim, and pulsed the trigger of the Mattock twice. The first spun the sniper nearly sixty degrees to the right. He cried out, and his cry was cut short by the second shot. A shot impacted against Garrus's shields but didn't take them down. He crouched deeper into cover. _Pistol fire from the biotic._ She probably had several more shots in her clip—but the biotics were a bigger worry. He leaned out of cover in time to see her throwing her arm back, and fired a shot into her right shoulder—the heavy muscle that controlled a lot of biotic throws, before firing two more to drop her. The third guy's head snapped to the left. His brains hit the wall with an audible smack, and he collapsed to the ground—a perfect shot over all the seats and luggage from the far side of the oblong room.

"I'm the showboat?" he muttered over the radio. "I had him."

"Maybe next time you'll have him faster," Shepard murmured back. He heard the smile in her voice—and the strain. "Move to the back and toward the center. We'll come up behind her."

 _Her_ was Enyala. She was gasping, the last of her guards dead, using biotics to rocket away from the center of the room toward the edge. Garrus saw two asari dead there, shotgun blasts to their torsos and limbs at odd angles evidence of Taylor and Lawson's fight.

Enyala was trembling, sweating, crouched behind some waiting room chairs on the right. She groaned, and an orb of biotic energy slammed into the space between Lawson and Taylor. They threw themselves away from the blast, and Enyala fired a wide shot that vaporized on Lawson's barrier—but at the impact, the barrier flickered and died, and Miranda stumbled. Taylor caught her and thrust her behind an armored crate, following quickly, and another shotgun blast hit the metal with an audible bang.

Both Taylor and Lawson were done, completely tapped out and exhausted, unable to throw as much as a simple biotic punch. But they still had their resources. Beside Garrus, Shepard's omni-tool flashed. A blazing arc of fire soared over the chairs Enyala was using for cover. She saw it coming, and with a cry, leapt over the chairs, but she tripped and fell flat on her face. Biotics still crackled around her, but they were unstable, flickering and fading away. Shepard would have waited for her to get up—so Garrus took the shot.

Enyala's body skidded across the stone warehouse floor, then came to a stop. And Miranda walked around the crate, alongside the vivid, glistening stripe of violet, and came to stand over the corpse. Tears were still running down her sunburned nose. She bit her lip, blinked hard, and kicked the asari, viciously, so that she rolled over and her empty eyes stared at the ceiling. Miranda fired three rounds into her face, and slowly, let her pistol fall. She swallowed, straightened. "There could be more Eclipse mercs near the shuttle," she said. "I want to make sure Oriana and her family get on safely."

"Miranda—" Taylor started, reaching for her.

She stiffened, and walked away without looking at him. "Don't start, Jacob. It's fine." They walked into the elevator out—the one that led to the docking bay. She paused after pushing the button. "It's not," she admitted, voice heavy with fatigue. "I can't believe Niket sold me out. I didn't even see it coming."

"No one ever does," Garrus murmured. She glanced at him, and her expression softened.

"I suppose you're right."

"Even with all your upgrades, you can still make mistakes," Shepard told her.

Her fists clenched at her sides, and she looked over at Shepard. "But I let it get personal, and I screwed up! Why didn't you let me kill him? I could've handled that. But watching him get gunned down by that asari bitch—"her voice broke off in another sob, and she shook her head violently, thrust her chin up.

Shepard shook her head. "He was paid to do it, but Niket was doing what he thought was the right thing to do. And you still cared about him, even if he betrayed you."

"If you'd taken him out, you would've wished you hadn't," Jacob agreed. "It was the right call."

Miranda looked away. "You're right, and my father knew it," she said. "It's always been like this. My father gave me anything I ever wanted, but there was always a hook, an angle for his long-term plan. I threw everything he ever gave me when I ran. Except Niket. Weakness on my part?"

It wasn't really a question for any of them, but Shepard answered it anyway. "I don't know. If it's weakness, it's a weakness I understand. But Miranda—"she hesitated. "Living like that, tossing aside everything you care about—or might care about—just to be safe? It's not really living." She wasn't looking at Miranda, either. Instead, she stared at the empty corner of the elevator, arms half-crossed, shoulders raised. _Somehow, I don't think she's talking about Lawson._

But Miranda took it as a warning. "It's okay, Shepard," she assured the younger woman. "My father hurt me, but he didn't break me. As much as he tried to turn me into exactly what he wanted, I'm my own person."

Shepard pressed her lips together, but didn't answer directly. "Any other old friends your father might use against you?" she asked.

Lawson shook her head. "No. I cut ties with everyone else. Anyone I'm close to now works for Cerberus." She paused, and looked hard at Taylor, then back at Shepard. "Or you. I think I'm starting to realize that's not exactly the same thing. My father's powerful, but he won't cross the Illusive Man. And he should think twice before crossing you."

"You still have Oriana," Shepard told her.

Miranda smiled wearily. "My father didn't give her to me. I rescued her. But yes, you're right. I still have something. Thank you."

The elevator stopped and opened onto the dock. They looked around. Civilians were everywhere, waiting for the shuttles to start moving again. But there were no guns, not a single black 'E' on yellow to be seen. "Looks like we're clear," Taylor said. "Home free."

"There she is," Miranda said. Her voice was different than Garrus had ever heard it. Soft and unsure. He followed her gaze to a human girl chatting with two older humans, male and female. All were dressed Citadel-style in the latest Council-race fashions. Shining, luxury carry-ons were piled up next to them. Miranda had clearly taken good care of her sister when she'd selected her adoptive guardians. The girl herself was clearly Miranda's twin, but the differences in their lives were obvious, from the tan that said the girl hadn't spent a lot of time in space, to her up-to-the-minute bob and makeup and the easy smile on her face. Here there were no flashing violet lights, no clue about what had gone down beneath the port to alarm the affluent charter ship passengers. "She's safe," Miranda said. "With her family."

She stiffened, trying to pull the vestiges of her professionalism around her like a coat. "Come on. We should go."

Shepard was watching her. "Don't you even want to say hello?" she asked.

"It's not about what I want, it's about what's right for her," Miranda protested. "The less she knows about me, the better. She's got a family. A life. I'll just complicate that for her."

Shepard looked back at the happy family. There was something in her face Garrus couldn't identify, but suddenly, somehow she seemed much younger. He could almost imagine her, a thin, bony kid Oriana's age in an oversized Alliance T-shirt, her yellow hair plaited back in a rope, standing alone in a dock like this one back on Earth, clutching a battered old bag very unlike Oriana's sleek, matching suitcases to her side, and trying to ignore her fellow recruits all around her as they said goodbye to their parents, siblings, and friends. All the people she'd never had.

"If she's your twin," Shepard said, "She's figured out she comes from somewhere else. Miranda—tell her." Her voice was quiet. "I don't know why my mom walked out on me. But when I was a kid, I'd've killed to hear she did it _for_ me instead of what I actually found out. She doesn't need to know any details, but would it be so bad for Oriana to know she's got a sister who loves her?"

Miranda stared at Shepard. She half-raised her hand, then dropped it. "Shepard—you're right."

"Go on. We'll wait here," Shepard told her.

Taylor came up to stand next to her as Miranda walked away. "I never got as deep into your file as she did. Your parents left?"

Shepard wouldn't look at them, and after a second, she looked away from Miranda and Oriana too. "Never even saw my dad, and my mom left before I was ten minutes old. Yeah. I wasn't as lucky as Oriana. I didn't have a sister to find me a family. And no one ever picked me on their own." She didn't need subharmonics to telegraph the loneliness in her voice—decades old and so deep it went right through her. Garrus kept his mouth shut. If he spoke, he'd resonate for sure, and she wasn't asking for pity or sympathy here—just giving the answer to Taylor's question. The facts of her life. _Somehow that just makes it worse._

Jacob shifted. "That's rough. But I know how you feel. My dad was never around growing up. You get used to going it on your own, I guess." He jerked his head at Oriana in the distance as she turned to face her sister, wide-eyed. "Good on you for making sure the kiddo never has to deal with that. There's enough screwed-up families in the galaxy." He glanced at Garrus. "How about you, Vakarian? Where are your parents?"

 _Great. Let's swap depressing backstories._ He waited to answer until he knew for sure he could answer evenly, playing it off like he was thinking about Miranda and her sister too. "My folks are back on Palaven, along with my younger sister. Pretty sure _I'm_ the most screwed-up part of my family narrative. Sorry to disappoint."

Jacob smiled. "Hey, you're dysfunction enough to screw up an entire family on your own. I can feel it. You talk to them much?"

"Sometimes."

"Your dad was on the Citadel last I heard," Shepard said, looking over at him again. "He retire in the past two years?"

"He took a position closer to home," Garrus confirmed. "I guess now Solana's out on her own, he wanted to be there for Mom."

 _Of course, if that was it, he'd've been home seven years ago_ , Garrus didn't say. The last thing he needed was for Shepard and the others to find out about his mom. Not with Lawson already feeling he might be too unstable to keep the pace as it was.

"Nice that he's committed to his family like that," Taylor said. "Came back when it counted. Better than a lot of guys."

"Castis Vakarian always does his duty, alright," Garrus said under his breath.

Jacob finally got the hint. "Not on the best terms with the guy, huh? I get that too. Fair enough. So you guys have any plans for shore leave—or don't we get that?" he asked Shepard.

She scoffed. Seemed relieved to have changed the subject. "You can take your ass off right now if you feel like it, Mr. Taylor. Shootout's over with. Get a snack. Go get drunk. Get laid, if you can. I'll call you if I need you to pick up Krios or Samara."

Taylor arched an eyebrow at her tone. His eyes gleamed. "Please. I got no problems with the ladies, Shepard," Taylor said. He backpedaled quickly. "Commander."

She waved a hand without even looking at him. Garrus tried not to feel too smug at the irritated expression on Taylor's face. "Uh-huh."

Taylor stepped just a little closer to her. "The real question is what you're doing with _your_ free time, Commander."

Garrus broke in mildly. " _I'm_ going shopping, if anyone's interested. I'll give Cerberus this over the Alliance: you guys actually pay. And since I seem to have walked off Omega without any of my personal effects, and going back to pick them up may not be the best idea—"

"To say the least," Shepard murmured, amused.

"Figure I ought to pick up a couple off-duty outfits," Garrus finished. "Maybe get this thing patched." He gestured at the hole in the neck of his hardsuit.

"Or get a new one entirely," Shepard suggested. "I'm always worried one of the thugs we face won't be a complete idiot and notice you've got a gaping _hole_ in your armor. You know Mom _hates_ visitors to her med bay."

"And the wrath of Karin Chakwas is a terrible thing to behold," Garrus deadpanned.

Shepard jerked her head at Miranda, headed back toward them. She walked to meet her. "Alright?" she said gently.

Miranda was crying again. She nodded once. "Better than I've been in a long time. Thank you," she said again. "Really." Impulsively, she reached out and gripped Shepard and Jacob's wrists. She pressed them both, let go. She turned to Garrus, and gave him another nod, and the four of them turned to head back to the _Normandy_.

* * *

Miranda was quiet on the way back to the _Normandy_ , but when they dropped their guns off in the armory, she called to him before he could head to the showers. "Garrus."

He stopped in the hallway between the briefing room, the armory, and Mordin's lab, and turned to face her. She was wringing her hands, nervous. Couldn't look him in the eye. "I wanted to thank you especially," she said. "I didn't want you to come along to help Oriana. Maybe you didn't want to come along, either. We haven't always been friendly. But you put your security on the line to save my sister's. That means a lot."

"Archangel?" Garrus shrugged. "It was always going to get out sooner or later. Unless I retired. And that wasn't going to happen. It's a miracle no one's connected the dots already. Maybe we got those two salarians by the elevator up to Enyala."

"But maybe we didn't," Miranda said. "And maybe someone got a message out. We have to be prepared for increased hostility from the mercenaries out here in the Terminus."

Garrus bowed his head. "Got a bit too visible there at the end on Omega. They tagged me with Shepard. Maybe I should lay low for a bit."

"I'd love to agree with you," Miranda said frankly. "But I don't know how much it would help to leave Shepard fighting Archangel's war without Archangel. If word got out, they _know_ she saved you now. They'll want her as much as they want you. You started this, and you're going to have to help us deal with the consequences. She'll worry, but she'll need you more than ever." She made a face, and Garrus knew it still burned her up to say that.

Garrus sighed. "Shepard always worries. I'm not sure how hot a target we'll be, though. The leaders of these organizations—the ones that are left, anyway—they're not stupid. They can't be. Hard to turn a profit chasing two people that aren't actively working to bring you down anymore, especially when everyone you've ever sent before has wound up dead. If we run into Eclipse, Blue Suns, or the Blood Pack—"his mandibles contracted, and he corrected himself. "When we run into them, it'll probably be like it was today. Everyone shooting at me and Shepard, making it that much easier for the rest of you to take them out. Amateurs."

"Don't let yourself get cocky," Miranda warned. "Even amateurs can get lucky."

Garrus looked down. "I know." He paused. "Lawson—about your friend. I'm sorry."

Her fists clinched, and she nodded once before she could speak. "So am I."


	15. Auld Lang Syne: Run about the Slopes

XV

Auld Lang Syne: Run about the Slopes

Before Garrus went shopping the next morning, he set up an encrypted funds transfer. He suspected Cerberus wasn't paying him near as much as Massani or Goto—but last week he had been surprised at the size of the check that had come in over the channel he'd given Miranda when he'd filled out his paperwork.

He didn't need most of it. Like the Alliance had, Cerberus was supplying his meals, his bunk, and his guns. _What else does a turian need?_ Everything else was just compensation for risks taken. And he'd always been willing to take risks free of charge. So he set 20 percent of his check aside for Illium, marked 10 percent to put away somewhere when he had the time to research the best place for it, and put 1750 credits through the transfer to Palaven.

 **For Mom,** he wrote. **–G**.

He didn't regret it in the markets, but he had to admit the prices on Illium were ridiculous. He had one moment when he actually missed Omega. Full of criminals and the desperate, swarming with thugs, at least it had always easy to find a cheap suit there. The fact that Cerberus could afford the markup was limited consolation. He was getting ripped off right along with them.

He picked up a couple of sets of civilian clothes and hauled them back to the _Normandy_ , too disgusted to start arguing with an armorer. He walked back through the airlock. "Garrus!" Joker called. Despite the fact that the crew was on shore leave, he was seated in the cockpit, watching a vid on a screen overhead. "Where you been? Shepard commed for you about half an hour ago."

"If she wanted me that bad she could've radioed," Garrus told him. "Why were you still around to hear it?"

Joker made a face. "Pfft! Illium. I mean, it's not like it's Omega. No one out there's likely to break my legs just for fun. But Ken and Gabby are meeting with some armorers in an hour to refit the _Normandy_ with some upgrades Jacob requisitioned. I want to be here to make sure they treat the old girl right." He turned his attention back to the busty redhead on the screen, wide-eyed and sweating, hiding behind a flimsy door, and breathing heavily as scare chords played through the tinny speakers.

He absently stroked the controls as he watched, and Garrus rolled his eyes. He'd never met a pilot that loved a ship more than Jeff Moreau. "I'll just leave you to that, then."

"Shepard's in the briefing room with Jack, Grunt, and Tali," Joker told him. "If you hurry, they _might_ not leave without you."

Garrus headed toward the battery to put his things away before heading out. _Jack, Grunt, and Tali._ It was a heavy team, a well-balanced team. Both the new recruits were dangerous people, but since it was Jack instead of Goto or Massani, Garrus guessed they were going for the asari justicar first. Shepard would want Jack available to offset Samara's biotics if things went bad.

He folded his new clothes into the trunk beneath his cot and turned right around to go back up to the armory, trying to ignore the fact that he was pretty annoyed Shepard wanted him on duty again. Taylor had been joking about their not being allowed the shore leave everyone else was on right now, but it seemed he'd been more right than wrong, at least in Garrus's case.

He wanted to be there if Shepard needed him. Wanted to back Tali up, too, on her first mission after Haestrom. But he needed some time. He wanted to check back with Liara. Walk around for a while. Try to clear his head of all the crap that had been floating around up there since Shepard had dived in to save his sorry carcass on Omega. He couldn't do that with Shepard right there.

He left the armory and caught sight of the others, just about ready to head out like Joker had warned. Shepard crossed her arms when she saw him. "Garrus. Good of you to join us."

"Shore leave," Garrus replied. "I was shopping, remember?"

"Yet I still see a big-ass hole in the same hardsuit the Suns shot up on Omega," she retorted.

"Couldn't find anything that fit me quite so well."

Jack made a disgusted noise. "Can we skip the banter? Thought we had to find a badass justicar that might start murdering any minute or something. Come on! I'm itching for some action." She glared at Garrus. "She's happy you're back in time," she informed him. "Don't expect any kisses from _me_."

"Have I missed something?" Tali asked, amused, looking from Garrus to Jack.

"Jack likes to mess around," Garrus told her, walking toward the exit. "So, Samara, is it? What do you know?"

"Shepard's asari buddy, the spy or something, says she's being tracked by the cops," Jack reported. "They're sure she's about to start tearing heads apart."

"Ought to be fun," Grunt said.

"Yep," Jack agreed. "I've been bored as shit."

"We don't know Samara's caused any trouble," Shepard said. "Justicars are supposed to uphold the law, not break it."

"These tentacle heads are nervous for some reason," Jack said, stepping out into the dock with the rest of them. "I smell trouble."

The five of them headed across the market to the tourist section Garrus had found Shepard in before. Beside the taxi station, there was a small police kiosk. A bored-looking asari was playing virtual cards on her terminal. Shepard cleared her throat, and the asari looked back.

"Can I help you with something?"

Shepard glanced down at the asari's name plate, cycling through a variety of different languages. "You can if you're Officer Dara. We're looking for an asari warrior named Samara."

Dara jumped about eight centimeters into the air. She'd shut off her card game and opened a report in a half second. "Why? Do you have a problem? Did she kill somebody already?"

Jack leveled an I-told-you-so look at the rest of the group, folding her arms in satisfaction. Shepard rolled her eyes. "Relax. I just need to speak with her."

Dara let out a long, shaky breath. "Good. Samara's the first justicar I've seen on Illium. If I'm lucky, things will stay peaceful." She pointed at the taxi stand with a finger. "She went to the commercial spaceport a few hours ago. If you want to get there, the pedestal on that balcony will summon a cab. Just be polite when you meet her. Justicars embody our highest laws, and they usually stay in asari space. She's not used to dealing with aliens."

Shepard frowned. "Are you really expecting her to up and kill someone, just like that?"

Dara made a face. "If you follow the laws, you've got nothing to fear," she hedged, with a sideways glance at everyone but Shepard. _Apparently we don't look like law-abiding citizens._ Garrus considered how the five of them must appear. _A turian with half a face; a half-dressed, bald human covered in prison tats; a krogan; and a quarian, with the galaxy's ideas about them—I'd probably be suspicious too._ "And a justicar would die without hesitation to protect the innocent. But their code orders them to stop lawbreakers, with lethal force in most cases, and everyone skirts the law somehow on Illium. If someone tried to bribe her, she'd be obliged to gun them down as a matter of honor. I'm hoping to avoid that."

It was Shepard's turn to make a face. "God. What the hell is a justicar?"

Dara's eyes sparkled then. "They're a monastic order," she explained, with something like awe in her voice. "They've given up their families and possessions to follow their code. Most of them are on some lifelong mission, but they'll always stop to deal with any injustice they encounter," Her voice turned down then. "Which can be a problem." She looked up, squinted at Shepard. "In some ways, they're a lot like the Spectres, undertaking personal missions."

 _Not bad_ , Garrus thought. _Dangerous mercs wouldn't talk to the police_. _She doesn't recognize Shepard, or we'd've known it by now, but she still arrived at the right conclusion._

Shepard gave the officer a ghost of a smile, inclining her head, confirming her guess. "Spectres are authorized by the Council. Who do justicars represent?" she asked.

Dara blinked. "What? That's like—I don't know a good human metaphor. They represent their code, our code." She waved a hand. "It's closer to a religious group than a legal branch. No law-abiding asari would question a justicar's orders. Nobody becomes a justicar for personal gain. And they'd die before breaking their oaths."

There was the hero-worship in her voice again. Shepard was less than impressed, though. She folded her arms. "Well. Samara sounds like a barrel of laughs," she said under her breath. "Why are you worried about other species coming into contact with her?"

Dara spread her hands. "If a justicar kills an asari, none of us questions it. But if she killed a human . . . Do you think the Alliance would understand her actions and respect her authority?" She gestured at Shepard and Jack. "You can't even figure out your own religions! It's a big, diplomatic incident just waiting to happen."

"Well, we'll try to avoid that," Shepard promised. "Thanks for the information." She turned away, and the others followed her over to the shuttle station. "Can't say I'm a big fan of zealots," she muttered, "but if the asari are impressed, that's something."

Garrus glanced at her. "Got that much experience with religious zealots, do you?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Enough."

Garrus exchanged a glance with Tali. Another story Shepard wouldn't tell them. _Still. I guess she's hardly the only one keeping things to herself._ Tali tilted her head in a subtle expression of a shrug. A shuttle bus flew over to the edge of the pavement, and she filed in behind Grunt to sit in the back. Garrus sat beside Jack, while Shepard took the seat next to the driver. "The spaceport," she said.

"You got it," the asari driver said.

The atmosphere was tense when they got out of the shuttle bus. A cop was confronting a volus right on the landing. She was plain for an asari, but Garrus liked the way she stood and her no-nonsense, barking alto. "Where do you think you're going?"

The volus's voice came filtered through his suit, interspersed with the sound of his air exchange. "I'm taking my goods to Omega, Detective."

The detective shook her head at the transport guard, and the turian took up a ready stance. "You're not going anywhere, merchant," she told the volus. "Not until I solve this murder."

"The justicar?" Garrus murmured.

"Maybe. Shut up," Shepard whispered back.

The volus was protesting he'd had nothing to do with the murder, that it had been mercenaries.

 _Great. More._

"The victim was your business partner," the detective told the volus, "and I'm not ruling you out. I'll let you know when you can leave."

"What about that justicar that just showed up?" the volus whined. "Everyone says she might go crazy and start killing. I need to leave."

The detective folded her arms. "She'll only kill the unjust, so I'm sure you have nothing to worry about, Pitne For. Find me in the station if you need me." She stalked off, and Shepard glanced at Garrus and Tali, then casually walked up to the volus.

"What do you want?" the volus, Pitne For, demanded irritably. "I've already got mercs wanting to kill me like they did my partner. I don't need any more trouble. As if that weren't enough, some asari justicar showed up this morning. All the natives are scared of her. I've got to get off this world."

"Has Samara actually done anything yet?" Shepard asked him, as unimpressed as only she could be. She needed information, but she didn't seem in the mood to play nice with this guy.

The volus spread his hands. "The asari say that justicars are lethal in a fight, and if they so much as smell corruption, they start shooting. The thing is, corruption isn't that hard to find around here."

Garrus regarded the volus. Over the years, he'd learned never to underestimate a volus. Something about this guy was off. He definitely had something he didn't want that justicar finding out about—some reason he thought she might shoot him. And most mercs didn't go after random civilians without a reason. It was bad business. But they weren't here to do the detective's police work for her. _Got to remember that._

"Do you know where I could find Samara?" Shepard was asking.

The volus extended a claw to indicate the direction, across the spaceport toward a more residential area. "She's in the alley where my business partner was murdered. The detective sealed the area, so you'll have to talk with her if you want to go there."

 _And yet they let Samara waltz right in. For someone they're so nervous will get violent, they're giving her an awful lot of leeway._

Shepard was more focused on the volus himself now, though. She was looking down at him with an expression of disgust. "Your partner was the guy that got offed? You don't seem too broken up about it."

The volus stood a little straighter. "Dakni Kur knew the risks when he took to spacing. Right now, my worry is me." He looked around, clearly nervous. "It's unhealthy to be a volus in the Nos Astra spaceport right now, especially a volus named Pitne For."

"You think mercs killed him? Why?" Shepard challenged the volus.

The volus was willing enough to answer, at least. "Dakni Kur was cutting through a back alley last night when someone killed him with a shotgun. I saw his body this morning. They'd used modded rounds. That means Eclipse mercs."

That was interesting. Not everyone would know that. Certainly not a completely legitimate businessman. Shepard arched an eyebrow. "You're acquainted with them." It wasn't a question.

"I occasionally do business with them," Pitne confirmed. "But only in well-lit places, with my guards." He eyed another turian about a meter back, armored in dark, professional gray. Elanus Risk Control Services weapons, it looked like. Standard, but effective. The guard himself had Carthaan colony markings and looked like he was over the age of service—maybe in his forties. Garrus tipped his head at the guard, and wasn't surprised when the guard didn't react and kept scanning the crowd for threats to his principal. _The only question is whether its professionalism or disapproval._ Once upon a time, he could blend into the crowd, and when another turian saw him clearly doing something outside of the Hierarchy's established guidelines for public service, they'd forget it was him in five minutes. The scarring over half his face was a more memorable identifying feature than anyone needed to pick him out in a line up. Unfortunately, now that he was finally getting the courage up to look at his face in the mirror, he'd had to realize that the scarring had _not_ had the side benefit of making him look older. The other side of his face still looked like the man that should be serving in C-Sec right now and wasn't. So _now_ whenever another turian saw him clearly doing something outside of the Hierarchy's established guidelines for public service, he looked more like a thug and a dropout than ever.

 _But hey, at least a memorable one._

Pitne For was explaining why the Eclipse mercenaries were criminals. "They are all cold-blooded killers."

"Trust me, we probably know more about Eclipse criminal activities than you do," Shepard told him. Pitne For flinched, and edged closer to his guard, and Shepard smiled coldly at him, allowing the misinterpretation. "But if you're in business with them, why would they have killed your partner? Why do you think they're coming after you too?"

"I have no idea," Pitne said. "We're innocent merchants."

"Uh-huh," Shepard said, unconvinced.

Pitne shrugged and gesticulated. "But they killed him, so they must be after me too. I have to work the angles and get out of here."

Shepard was done talking to the volus. "Good luck with that. Thanks for the info."

As they walked away, Grunt shifted, restless. "So we're going to run into those Eclipse mercs, right? I want to kill something."

"Don't worry," Tali said. "With Shepard's luck, we'll have to fight an army of them. And if we don't, I'm sure she'll stop at some pirate's base when we leave Illium, and you can shoot criminals to your heart's content."

"I don't care if they're criminals. They just need to put up a good fight," Grunt corrected her. He bounced on his feet. There was a red light in his blue eyes. "Let's find that justicar already."

Shepard frowned at him, but she didn't say anything. The spaceport police station was easy to find. Had a big sign and everything. It was clean and official-looking, but Garrus saw reports lying unprotected on desks, and there was practically no security as they walked through the building. No metal detectors, no searches, no challenge.

 _It's a placebo station. Put here to make civilians feel better, but these guys aren't in control._ Garrus turned around and walked backward, looking back at the spaceport, the merchants making deals in the dock, the dirty-faced children hiding in the corners, spying, the neon of interplanetary corporations' local offices, less than a block away. Everything was clean, well-run, and polite, but it was Omega. Just Omega in a ballgown.

Shepard found the detective they'd seen on the dock without too much trouble. She was sitting at a desk near the center of the station, up to her elbows in paperwork. She glanced up at Shepard, then did a double take of their entire group. Her mouth tightened. "Nice guns. Try not to use 'em in my district. What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for the justicar, Samara," Shepard told her.

The detective reached under her desk, and Garrus guessed she was gripping a weapon there. "If you've got a score to settle with Samara, take it somewhere else. I've got more than enough trouble here already."

Shepard raised her empty hands. "No score. I want to recruit her for my mission. Then we'll be on our way."

The detective—Anaya, her nameplate said—changed her manner entirely. She let go of her weapon and folded her hands on the desk, regarding Shepard. "Justicars usually work alone—what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't. It's Shepard."

Anaya's eyes widened, and then she started to smile. "Shepard, huh? Justicars are drawn to impossible causes."

Jack smirked. "She'll like our mission then."

Anaya nodded decisively. "If you're getting her out of our district, I'll get you to her ASAP. She's at the crime scene."

"Yeah, we heard. Gotta say, I was wondering why you let her into a sealed crime scene," Shepard said.

"I'm a cop. I'll work with a justicar all I can," Anaya said, as if it were so obvious she couldn't believe she even had to say it. The justicars certainly had a reputation among the asari. "Besides, she's been looking at crime scenes longer than our two lifespans combined. She knows how to handle herself."

"But you want her out of your district," Shepard pointed out. "Why?"

Anaya shrugged. "My bosses want me to detain her. They're worried she'll cause some kind of cross-species incident. But her justicar code won't let her be taken into custody. If I try it, she'll have to kill me." Her mouth turned down, and Garrus guessed that despite her calm tone, Anaya was worried. "I have no interest in dying, so if you lure her away with some big, noble cause before I have to carry out my orders, I'm thrilled to help you."

Shepard frowned. "Your superiors are sending you to certain death for no good reason? You could disobey if you wanted."

"We can disobey suicidal orders?" Garrus asked. "Why wasn't I told?"

Tali glanced at him, amused. "We'd be mutinying about twice a day."

Shepard's lips twitched. "You love it, both of you. And even if you didn't, most of the time I'm not stupid about it. I can't say the same for Anaya's superiors."

Anaya's jaw was set. "I'm a cop, and I know my duty. I've been ordered to detain her, and I will. Unless I can get her to leave my district first."

Shepard nodded. "Just point me to the crime scene, and I'll take care of it."

Anaya gave them directions. Shepard stayed a bit longer, asking questions about Samara. Among the things they learned: Samara was in the matron life stage, maybe older—centuries old with all the power that entailed; justicar laws were absolute; and they didn't normally leave asari space.

Anaya was worried about what could have brought Samara to Illium in the first place, but she suspected it was something bigger than the volus's murder.

Shepard asked about Dakni Kur then. Anaya was willing to share. "He got murdered. A professional hit; we're not dealing with junkies looking for a score. I'm thinking the local Eclipse mercenary band. Can't prove it, but if the volus was dirty, too, maybe it's just a deal gone bad."

"We've dealt with Eclipse before," Garrus told the detective.

Anaya looked them over. "I could believe it. You look like you've been around the block. I'd root Eclipse out of the district if I could, but I haven't been able to find their nest yet."

"What are the odds we find it?" Jack said under her breath.

"Good," Shepard replied, without turning around.

"Good," Grunt repeated, with emphasis. Without waiting for orders, he started walking the direction the detective had told them to go.

"Hold it, Grunt," Shepard said. "Chill out, will you? If we do walk into trouble, we don't want to do it blind."

Grunt growled in frustration. He cupped his temple in his hand. "Sorry," he muttered. "I—I need to focus."

"I'll send you back to the _Normandy_ if you can't keep it together," warned Shepard.

"It's fine. I'm fine," Grunt muttered.

Garrus looked over their baby krogan. He wasn't fine. That much was obvious. Krogan in general tended to get antsy traveling in space. Wrex had been a lot older than most, better able to control himself. Krogan spacers usually had to pack sedatives for long journeys or they fought their crews. Okeer would've programmed his perfect krogan with the self-control of a true soldier. Or he should have done. But if he hadn't, they might need to requisition some heavy-duty tranquilizer to help Grunt make it through their downtime. If he let them dose him.

 _Maybe this was a bad idea._

Shepard looked worried, too. She slowed her pace half a step so she fell in next to Garrus. She reached out and tapped two fingers on his wrist. Hand signals were risky now; Grunt and Jack could be counted on to devote themselves to learning new ways to kill things like they may not have learned anything else. Shepard didn't want Grunt to know he was being watched, that they were ready to incapacitate him if he went off the rails. But she wanted Garrus to be ready, all the same.

He drew his gun, ostensibly to be ready for any Eclipse sisters they might meet in the alley. They were coming up on it now. But also so he'd have it ready, just in case. He thought Grunt was trying to keep it under control—but they didn't know yet how well Grunt could control himself.

There were two policewomen stationed at the entrance to the alley, a back-of-building trash disposal lane for the local business offices and hotels immediately around the commercial spaceport. The buildings on either side were high enough the walkway was shadowed with gloom, even though it was midday. The alley was blocked off with police tape, but the asari nodded as they approached. "Anaya told us to let you through. Watch yourself. There's merc activity back here. We're waiting on backup."

Grunt relaxed all over even as the rest of them came alert. The red light left his eyes, and he smiled, pulling out his shotgun. "Bring them on," he said. "I'm ready."

"Freak," Jack muttered.

"Psycho," Grunt returned at once.

Garrus was actually impressed. "Nice."

"Asshole," Jack shot at him immediately.

"Love you, too."

"Quiet," Shepard hissed. "Listen!"

A woman was calling orders up ahead, around a bend. "Get the rest of Bravo squad prepped! Alpha squad went after that justicar twenty minutes ago, and they've gone dark."

Shepard signaled for quiet then, gestured for them to hold. Then she flickered away into darkness. Garrus enabled his thermal sensor to scan for her in the gloom. She crept around the corner to crouch behind some bins—she was holding a weapon. Judging from the position of her arms, her sniper. Her right hand moved up by her face, and she made the sign for "four." Garrus raised his hand and made the sign for "two" twice so the others could see. He hesitated, then motioned Grunt and Jack forward first, gesturing for Tali to follow them.

And then Grunt's boot hit a discarded soda can.

The Eclipse were on alert at once. "Someone's sneaking around back here!" A wild shot rang out. Then a light flashed from Shepard's omni-tool, a scream tore the air, and the sound of another shot ricocheted off the tall stone walls, echoing in the alley. Around the corner, Garrus heard a body drop the the ground. He ran to the corner and leaned out to look. Grunt had engaged a biotic commando, struggling to throw him off, but he had her arms pinned. Garrus saw her bones breaking. Tali and Jack killed another one together, and Shepard stole the shields of the fourth and raised her rifle.

Garrus took the shot before she could. Purple blood spattered the ground. Shepard glared at him. "I had her covered," she complained.

"Get her faster next time," Garrus said innocently.

Shepard laughed. "'Asshole.' She's got you pegged, alright."

"There's more going on down this way," Tali called.

Sure enough, there were thuds and gunshots echoing down the adjoining alley. They walked down to see what they could find. _Alpha squad and Samara, hopefully._

A long, drawn out scream sounded and stopped midsound as an asari hit a hotel window with a violet smear and a crunch. _Hope someone gets a discount for that._ Another asari, disarmed, crawled backward on her elbows. Her ankle was twisted, and her face was contorted with fear and disbelief. "Those were my best troops!" she cried.

Then Samara walked up some steps and into the pale street light. Her biotics were almost a handspan in breadth all around her. Her eyes, irises, cornea, and sclera, were glowing blue. She was dressed in a red hardsuit that had to have been developed mostly for show. She had a white metal gorget around her throat, and her shoulder guards looked up to the job, but her breastplate left a large expanse of her chest uncovered. Her barriers would be providing most of her protection.

"Tell me what I need to know, and I will be gone from here," she said in a musical alto, so calm and commanding it sent a child down Garrus's spine. _Down, boy._ "Where did you send her?"

The asari on the ground was shivering, but she yelled back at the justicar, "You think I'd betray her? She would hurt me in ways you can't imagine."

Samara continued stalking forward. "The name of the ship. Your life hangs on the answer, Lieutenant."

The Eclipse lieutenant spotted a pistol on the ground. She twisted and scrabbled for it, desperate. "You can kill me, but one of us will take you down, Justicar!" Samara clenched her fist, and the asari went flying, down into a small delivery dock down another flight of stairs. She cried out, windmilling in the air, grabbing for anything she could hold on to.

Samara's biotics exploded around her, lifting her up into the air, and she floated down—a jump of over four and a half meters. Beside Garrus, Jack folded her arms and snorted.

Samara landed right beside the Eclipse merc. She put her foot on the woman's throat. The heel of her boot cut off the lieutenant's windpipe, and she gagged. "What was the name of the ship she left on?" Samara asked again.

"Go to hell!" the lieutenant ground out.

Samara looked down at her dispassionately. "Find peace in the embrace of the goddess," she said. She twisted her leg. The crack of the mercenary's spine was audible, and Garrus's stomach clenched. Samara climbed the stairs, looking them over from head to toe. Garrus itched to raise his weapon, but whereas pointing his gun at Jack had seemed like a very good idea on the _Purgatory_ , pointing it at Samara now didn't seem nearly so well-advised. "My name is Samara, a servant of the Justicar Code. My quarrel is with these Eclipse sisters, but I see five well-armed people before me. Are we friend, or foe?"

"Coming into this alleyway, I would have said friend," Shepard said, voice tight with anger, "But I have to say, now I'm not sure. That merc was wounded and helpless. Do you just kill anyone who won't help you?"

Samara regarded Shepard coolly. "If my cause is important enough, yes. Are you different?"

Shepard stepped forward. "My name is Beth Shepard. I've killed my share of enemies. But always with good reason, and never when they're unarmed." Her challenge was so simple, so proud, and she sounded so right when she said it. _But sometimes it's just not that easy._ Garrus dropped his eyes.

 _Should it be?_

 _I don't know._

Watching Samara kill that merc—he'd done the same. He'd executed a dozen unarmed criminals. Maybe more. Slavers, murderers, and sociopaths, because he'd had an opportunity that might not come again, and the galaxy was better off without them. But that merc had been brave. She'd been loyal to her people. And remembering the way she'd crawled back on her elbows, that sickening crunch as Samara literally stomped her life out, he had a vision of a warehouse on Omega, looking down at a krogan bleeding from every limb and orifice. Then he saw the children that krogan had left packed into tiny crates in their own filth, left tied up to starve and die. He saw the innocents floating through space to make a point, and he was filled with so much rage it made him just as physically sick as before.

 _I don't know._

Samara's eyes flicked and hovered over his expression, then moved back to Shepard. "I answer to a code that is clearly defined. If my actions are true to that code, I am just. If they are not, I am unjust. I don't pretend that it is a simple matter, or that it seems right to everyone, but I sleep well at night, and that is more than most can say. How may I be of service to you?"

Shepard got straight to the point. "You've heard of the Collectors abducting human colonies? I need you to help me take them down."

Samara's lips curved slightly. "The Collectors are a worthy foe," she observed. "I would relish testing myself against them. But I seek an incredibly dangerous fugitive. I cornered her here, but these Eclipse sisters smuggled her offworld. I must find the name of the ship she left on before the trail goes cold."

There were footsteps behind them, and Garrus turned to see Detective Anaya leaning up against a wall. "I wish you were willing to go with the human, Justicar," she said. "I've been ordered to take you into custody if you won't leave."

Garrus thought he saw a flicker of compassion pass over Samara's placid face. "You risk a great deal by following your orders, Detective." Then she walked over to the detective's side. "Fortunately, I will not have to resist. My code obligates me to cooperate with you for one day. After that, I must return to my investigation."

Anaya looked nervously over at her. "I won't be able to release you that soon," she said.

"You won't be able to stop me," Samara told her. Again, Garrus thought he heard the slightest edge of regret in her voice, but she didn't exhibit a shred of uncertainty. Tomorrow, if Anaya and her superiors didn't let her go, Samara would gun them down or break them up against the wall without a qualm.

Shepard took half a step between Samara and the detective. "There must be some way we can all get what we need."

Samara gazed at her. "I see a way. While I am in custody, you find the name of that ship. Do that, and I will join you. Then the code will be satisfied."

Shepard hesitated. "A moment ago, you refused to give up your investigation, but now you're ready to come?"

"If I stay, I will be compelled to kill many innocents to escape incarceration," Samara replied.

"Like me," Anaya reminded them.

"I may be killed, and my quarry would be free to continue murdering," Samara continued. "If I come with you and survive your mission, I can resume my investigation. To do that, I need the ship's name to track her to her next hiding place. It is a simple choice."

"Makes sense," Tali told Shepard.

Jack shrugged. "A small chance is better than none. I wouldn't be so nice, if it was me, but I know about waiting out what you're after in Shepard's team." She shot a sideways glance at Anaya, and Garrus was somehow relieved to know even Jack wasn't willing to say she'd plow her way through the cops on a whim in front of actual cops. _Not sure if she's mellowing out or she's just smarter than I gave her credit for._

"This justicar code seems quite strict," Shepard observed.

Samara tilted her head. "It may seem so to you, but this is my oath. The expedient path may be fast and simple, but that does not make it the right path."

 _Well, you've heard that one before. And again. And again. And again._ It was a bit disorienting to see Castis Vakarian behind those glowing biotic eyes of doom and that plunging neckline, but suddenly Justicar Samara was looking a whole lot less glamorous. Garrus scowled, but Shepard was smirking at him, looking like now she was feeling a whole lot better about their would-be asari ally. Shepard's adherence to his father's school of thought was simultaneously one of her most attractive and one of her least attractive traits, Garrus thought. _You have to admire that kind of moral fiber. But damn, is it annoying._

"I hear you there," Shepard said. "Can you tell me more about your order?"

"Justicars are individuals who have forsworn family, children, and worldly possessions aside from some weapons and armor," Samara told them. "We travel asari space righting wrongs defined by the ancient code we have each memorized."

With a glance at Anaya, Shepard said, "Illium may be dominated by asari, but it isn't in asari space."

"My quarry fled to this place," Samara explained. "I am sworn to hunt her down, and I will follow anywhere she goes. It is rare for a justicar to leave asari space, but I must follow my oath. If I suffer for it, I will accept that."

"We'll try to keep the suffering to a minimum," Garrus said. "The ship the Eclipse sisters sent your target out on. Do you have any leads?"

Samara regarded him again. She inclined her head. "The volus merchant Pitne For is tied to this. Eclipse mercs are preparing to kill him. Get the truth out of him. He may know a way to the Eclipse base."

Anaya hesitated. "Well, I've got to get back to my station, and I guess I've got to take you with me."

Samara nodded, and fell into line behind the detective. "Thank you, Shepard," she said.

Jack raised a brow at Grunt. "Well. Looks like we're hunting Eclipse mercs after all."

"Heh heh. Told you."

* * *

 **A/N: Hey. I didn't forget my update this week and I have not abandoned you! I plead "bridesmaid in my sister's wedding." I was busy. But I'm thrilled to have my first ever brother, one of the best men I know and THE best for my sister.**

 **Anyway, here's your update. Enjoy. Leave a review if you've got something to say.**

 **Always,**

 **LMS**


	16. Auld Lang Syne: Hand of Thine

XVI

Auld Lang Syne: Hand of Thine

Because Pitne For hadn't been allowed to leave the spaceport, he wasn't too hard to find. Not many bars or coffee shops catered to the volus. They found him at the third one they tried, wedged into a booth in the corner beside his guard. He'd hooked a beverage hose up to the port in his arm. Like the quarians, the volus drank all their nutrients on hub worlds. Unlike the quarians, it wasn't the germs that could kill them. Without their suits, oxygenated air and pressure conducive to the survival of carbon-based life forms could burst them open like overripe fruit—with a side of poisoning.

Pitne was watching the lounge singer across the way—fortunately a professional instead of a karaoke singer. Human, her hair dyed an unnaturally dark shade of red, she was dressed asari-style and leaning into the microphone, whisper-singing in a husky alto that sounded like she'd smoked a few packs too many. But Garrus had heard a whole lot worse.

Shepard nodded at the guard and perched on the top of Pitne's booth, looking down at him. He glanced up at her and slid closer to the exit. "Hello again, Earth-clan. Did you speak to the detective?"

"And the justicar, too, so cut the bullshit," Shepard told him. "Why are the mercs after you?"

Pitne raised his hands. "I know nothing about any mercenaries, Earth-clan," he protested. "I'm merely an innocent merchant trying to make his way in life."

Shepard snorted. "Innocent, my ass. The Eclipse _are_ out to get you, and you know the reason why. I'm out to break into their base, so you ought to see how it's in your best interests to help me, you self-serving weasel."

Pitne For was silent for a long time. His air exchange filters worked loudly as the human singer wailed something that had been a hit on Thessia ten years back. Finally, the volus put his hands flat on the table. "Yes, you're right, Earth-clan. I'm desperate. I've got angry mercs after me and now this asari justicar. Let's talk. I smuggled a chemical onto Illium that boosts biotic powers in combat. It also is toxic. I may have, um . . . forgotten to mention that to the Eclipse. So they are perturbed and want to kill me."

"You're a swindler, and it's finally bitten you in the ass," Shepard summarized neatly.

Pitne didn't seem too disturbed by her evaluation of his character. "True and true, but I haven't survived as a merchant this long without being able to tell when there's a deal in the making. You want something."

Shepard sighed. "The Eclipse recently smuggled someone offworld. I need the name of the ship she left on."

Pitne paused, then fumbled in his pocket. "I don't know about their people-smuggling operations. They must keep records in their base. I do have a pass card they issued me to bring my goods in." He cleared his throat. "Well, I had to return that one, but I happened to make a copy." He slid the key card across the table to Shepard. She picked it up. "Take it, but be careful. Each Eclipse sister commits a murder to earn her uniform. They are all dangerous."

He gave them directions, and Shepard slid down from his booth. She started walking out, then paused. "Anyone want a snack?"

* * *

After they'd all taken a lunch break, they made their way to the building Pitne For had told them about—an otherwise-innocent-looking executive suite off the spaceport with its own small dock. The volus's pass card let them into the elevator that took them to the first level, above the garage, but before the door opened, a blue light flashed over them from head to toe. "Camera scan!" Garrus warned. "Be ready!"

The elevator door opened. "Powering up," an automated voice said. Tali's omni-tool flashed, and the LOKI security drone by the door exploded in a shower of sparks.

"I feel so welcome," Garrus said. "We should nominate them for a hospitality award."

"In your experience, are ruthless, murdering mercenaries welcoming of uninvited guests?" Tali inquired.

Garrus smiled. "Not usually, but there have been special occasions. Courtesy co-ops, that sort of thing." He saw a violet light flashing near the ceiling. _Silent security system._ Shepard had found a workbench by the door—probably the last place the Eclipse sisters checked their weapons before heading out on a job. She scanned something for the professor, then nodded at the rest of them.

Grunt almost jogged through the door ahead. Garrus frowned and hurried after him as the first shots broke out. Grunt roared and charged a tattooed asari with a shotgun, who went from determined to terrified-looking in less than a second. She tried to flare, but Grunt seized her arm, disabling her efforts. He rotated her body to catch no less than five different shots, grinning as the blood sprayed all over him, and moved to the right behind several cargo containers. He hurled the asari's lifeless corpse off of an open balcony, an easy port for Eclipse vehicles to enter and leave the base.

The benefit to Grunt's grand entrance, of course, was that every alerted asari in the room was now completely focused on him. Garrus heard Jack laugh behind him. He felt the energy build, and then she rocketed past him, illuminated by her biotics. A crate shot past Grunt to hit in the middle of a small knot of mercenaries. They scattered, shouting, "Get backup here! Now! We're under attack!"

Shepard and Tali fanned out behind him, and Tali's drone soared over the room, firing small but effective laser blasts. Shepard took a post over on the right. She held her rifle—in this team, the more unobtrusive the two of them were, the better. Grunt, Jack, and Tali would send the mercs into a panic, and he and Shepard could _clean up_.

Garrus selected and downed his first target, firing at Grunt across the room, but her friend raised a hand to a radio, nodded, took aim, and fired—not at Grunt, but at a container right in front of him and to his right.

The container exploded, and a red cloud of dust expanded in front of Grunt, opaque and menacing. As it touched him, he roared, and his body began to glow blue with a biotic reaction. The mercs took another shot at a container near Jack, and more red mist filled the air. She breathed it in, and Garrus focused on her face. Her pupils contracted, and the muscles of her face relaxed. She smiled, and the biotic field around her expanded.

 _Red sand, but more powerful and faster acting. The toxic chemical Pitne For sold? It obscures the battlefield, but it's a weapon too._

"Shepard, my scans confirm that the chemical compound will boost biotics. However, concentrated exposure will cause severe tissue damage. I recommend limited exposure," EDI's voice said over the radio.

"Jack! Stay away from that dust!" Shepard was already yelling. "You're good enough on your own!"

Garrus saw Jack's muscles ripple, like she wanted to disobey the order. Then he saw her swallow. The biotic field around her moved to her legs, she crouched, and leapt backward. Tali opened fire with her pistol, providing cover as Jack retreated. "Killjoy," Jack muttered under her breath.

"My specialty," Shepard told her.

"Eclipse forever!" an asari yelled over the field.

Garrus's visor was already set to scan for thermal. He looked past the chemical cloud—Grunt moving to another position in his peripheral—found an asari outline, and fired. He heard the sound of tearing flesh and saw her go down.

"Keep moving," Shepard told them. "Don't stay in any one position too long. Keep them guessing."

An asari, teeth bared, came leaping out of cover near Grunt, wreathed in dark energy. She hit him, and he slid back about a meter, but then squared his stance and grappled with her. He'd be fine.

"Target engaged," a synthetic voice said across the room, and semiautomatic fire broke out from a cheap, mass-produced weapon.

"Tali, you're—"

"I'm on it," Tali said, before Shepard could even finish. She went high, climbing up on stacked crates above the expanding, dissipating chemical cloud, flexed her arm, and Garrus saw the flash of a tech explosion through the mist. He reached behind him, pulled his helmet out from where it latched on to the back of his hardsuit, put it on, engaged the air supply, and charged forward into the fray.

Looking around, he whispered what he saw through his visor over the radio. "Two more by Grunt. Five up ahead. Mostly asari, but a couple of human women, it looks like. Two more LOKIs, Tali."

"I see them," Tali replied. He heard her slide off of her perch, heard armor on armor and the soft grunts of a melee fight off to the right. But just as the air in front of them began to clear, another canister came sailing through the air and erupted ahead.

"Gonna have to be our eyes, Garrus," Shepard said quietly. "Tell us where they are."

Garrus moved back toward Grunt's position. The krogan had the best perspective on the rest of the room. An asari came up on his flank. Garrus hit her hard with the butt of his rifle, brought his omni-tool up, and plunged its blade down through the gap at her neck. She gurgled on her own blood and fell silent, her features frozen in an expression of fear and hatred. Scanning the room, Garrus evaluated the outlines his visor was picking up.

"Shepard, one at eleven, thirty meters," he said. "Jack, there's three of them at one behind a makeshift barricade—I can see the interference in the heat signature." Grunt was at his back, and he heard the krogan fire behind him, heard a body fall. "Clear over here." He kept his voice low—they couldn't use hand signals in this cloud, but if an Eclipse sister heard him telling the others where the mercs were, they could guess where the others were positioned.

Fire lit up the room on the left, cutting through the mist and into Shepard's target. A woman screamed as her armor twisted and melted into her skin. The metal's glow outlined the woman he'd missed, crouching down beside her friend. As she rose to run, Garrus took the shot to take her down too, as Shepard finished up the living torch with a bullet to the head.

As Jack lit up blue, three sprays of bullets came at her, but she was already moving, diving behind cover as her biotics flew up—not at any of the targets Garrus had given her, but at the barricade in front of them. It smashed to pieces, sending the live mercs scattering. "Attack exceeds defense protocols," a LOKI said confusedly, before Tali lit it up and it exploded in a shower of sparks, blowing off the arm of the mech right next to it. Its gun went spinning to the floor, and Garrus rolled his eyes. Only thing the mech could do now was blow up, which it did—sending more dangerous sparks at the Eclipse sister that hadn't gotten far enough away. She cried out in pain.

"Yeah! That's what I'm talking about," Grunt said. "Aaaargh!" He ran to the left, the image of an out-of-control juggernaut, but his pistol shots were anything but uncontrolled. He got the slow merc in the thigh, one sprinting to the left in the shoulder. The shots didn't hurt them, but it finished taking out whatever barriers Jack and the crappy mech hadn't already taken down, and Tali, Garrus, and Shepard were all ready to follow up.

The third merc went spinning up into the air, and Jack shot her down, rising to her feet as the wind from the open balcony finally finished blowing the chemical cloud away.

Jack's muscles spasmed beneath her skin. The biotic field around her curled and fluctuated, very unstable-looking. The expression on her face was . . . odd. Somewhere between euphoria and irritation. Tali and Shepard came up to join Garrus and Grunt by Jack, ready to help if she needed it, but as they watched, she took several deep breaths. One by one, she curled her fingers into fists by her sides, and her biotics died down. Her pupils were still contracted, but her jaw was tight and her shoulders were square. She had it under control.

"You alright, Jack?" Shepard asked.

"These bitches aren't stupid," she admitted. "'Bout a year since I tasted a high like that." She shook her head. "I'm better than that. I'll try to keep that shit away from us. Throw it back in their pretty, blue faces. I'm not the only one that stuff can kill—just the only one that it'll help first. Just watch my back."

"You got it, Jack." Shepard promised. As Grunt forged ahead and Jack walked out on his flank, Garrus considered the biotic.

"You know, someday she might even be a soldier," he murmured to Shepard.

He'd meant it half as a joke, half as an expression of surprise, but Shepard agreed immediately. "There's more to her than she knows," she said quietly. "She's been through hell, and she's the product of that experience. Take her new places?" Shepard shrugged. "She can turn it around. She's young and smart and more willing to learn than you'd think."

"And him?" Garrus asked, tilting his head at Grunt.

Shepard frowned. "I don't know what's up with Grunt. Could just be he's young, too, but I'm a little worried. Eyes ahead!" Her voice turned sharp as more gunfire broke out in the hall ahead.

Garrus ducked into an alcove behind a pillar. The hall was thankfully clear of cargo containers of Pitne For's toxin, but there were three Eclipse mercs blocking their progression behind a makeshift barricade—bits of scrap and heavy plastic like you might find in a garage. They had to be near one of the places the mercs kept their vehicles.

Grunt charged the strongpoint, but an asari caught him in a biotic throw that hurled him back on his ass. He roared in frustration as all three Eclipse fired on him. Garrus saw his shields go down, but Tali and Jack were already going in, giving the mercs something else to focus on. One fired at Tali's drone, trying to take it out of action before it could start causing real damage behind their cover. Another was in a biotic duel with Jack. Dark energy bloomed and roiled in the corridor between them like a building storm.

Garrus's shot rang out with Shepard's, from the other side of the corridor behind another pillar. Two of the Eclipse went down, and Tali took out the third with two neat shotgun blasts. The corridor fell silent, and Jack walked back. She held out a hand to help Grunt up. He took it with a guttural growl, looking disgusted with himself.

"You're bleeding," Garrus informed him. A bullet had gone into his meaty, unarmored bicep. It didn't look too bad—the blood was oozing, not gushing. It had caught in muscle mass and had probably missed any major blood vessels, and the Eclipse were shooting bullets meant to take out other asari and humans, it looked like, nothing near what they needed for a fight with a krogan.

Grunt looked down at the wound. "Huh. Think it'll scar?"

"Not if Dr. Chakwas takes a look at it later," Shepard told him.

"Too bad." Grunt cradled his shotgun. "Can we go now?"

Shepard rolled her eyes and turned her wrist over. An application of medi-gel detached from her omni-tool to cover the wound. It would stop the bleeding and keep the wound from festering until they could get Grunt to the doctor, and some krogan could regen almost as fast as a vorcha, but he was going to have to walk around with the bullet until they could get out of here. Only a krogan could take a bullet like it was no big deal. But Shepard poked her finger at Grunt's breastplate. "You want a fight, and you think you're invincible," she said quietly. "But you're not. You're big and dangerous and can take a hell of a lot of punishment, but if you charge in without a plan, you _will_ get yourself killed eventually. You're not just a weapon, you're a soldier. Act like it and practice some defense, or I can't use you. Got it?"

Grunt regarded her for a long moment, then he nodded. "Understood."

"Shepard," Tali called softly.

Shepard stepped back from Grunt and looked at her. Tali tilted her head at a nearby door. Shepard signaled to the rest of them— _Quiet._

They regrouped around her, and then Garrus heard what Tali had—a voice praying in the next room, some sort of security station. "Oh, goddess, don't let them see me. If they do, don't let them kill me. What am I doing here?"

Shepard motioned for them to hold for several seconds. Then, pistol at the ready, she plunged into the next room. "Out where I can see you! Hands in the air!"

"Wait, stop!" an asari squealed, darting out into the open. "I didn't fire my weapon once! I pretended to because the other Eclipse sisters were watching, but I didn't really shoot! I came here to hide as soon as I could!" Her words came out in a panicked rush.

Garrus looked around. The asari was alone back here. The room was empty except for the consoles at the security station. The asari's knees were bent, half ready to kneel. She was unarmed, and her gauntleted hands were clasped in front of her as she begged.

Jack's biotics flared. "You're in an enemy uniform, and I'm gonna kill you!"

Grunt chuckled. "Maybe you can pretend to keep breathing."

"I'm not one of them! I'm new!" the mercenary protested. "I thought being Elnora the mercenary would be cool, but I didn't know what they were really like—"

Garrus was fixated on the uniform. The black-and-gold gauntlets, the "E" across Elnora's chest. Something Pitne For had said—he looked at Shepard. "Shepard. Jack's right. The uniform."

The volus had told them—every merc in this bunch of Eclipse had to murder someone to earn her uniform. This stammering kid was already a killer. Shepard's face hardened. When she spoke, her voice was soft. "Not one of them, are you? I'm not buying it."

Elnora's face contorted. "Screw you, bitch!" she cried. She lit up blue, and five shots rang out. Elnora collapsed in a spreading pool of violet gore, her head and torso destroyed beyond recognition. Garrus didn't know which of them had killed her. For once, he didn't want to. Killing cowards like Elnora the mercenary always left a sour taste in his mouth.

They headed back into the halls of the base. A set of steps curved around into a garage, like Garrus had thought, and the mercs had dug in here to make another stand. As they rounded the corner, a barrel came flying at them, but Jack lit up and caught it in a biotic field. With a cry, she flung it back away from them, exploding it in the faces of three incoming mercs. "I will kill you all!"

Another sickly red chemical cloud went up, and the mercs started coughing and cursing. Jack crouched, then using her biotics to augment her spring, rocketed forward to hit the ground. A shockwave cracked the cement floor and rippled ahead, and the three mercs immediately ahead were tossed up into the air with the force of the blast. Grunt and Tali moved forward together, Tali taking point—but another group of mercs started in on their flank.

Garrus moved left and forward at a fast jog, constructing a targeting solution as he went. Shepard faded out—heading to a position behind the enemy. "Check the turian and the blonde!" an Eclipse merc shouted. "These are the same bastards that hit Enyala's crew on that job by the private spaceport!"

"Damn it, where'd she go? Who the hell are these people?"

"Ask nicely!" Tali taunted the mercenaries, detonating a LOKI mech right next to the fuel tank on a hoverbike near the center of the room. The tank exploded, spinning one of the lieutenants entirely around. Shepard's incendiary hit her other side, and her burning corpse collapsed to the ground. A sharp, acrid smell filled the room.

"Shit!" someone cried. Garrus found her and fired, shooting her teeth through the back of her throat. Grunt picked up the body of another, hacked mech, and as Jack laid down some cover fire, he ran into a group of mercenaries with it, crushing one in a metal embrace, blasting another with the special, heavy-duty shotgun Shepard had picked up for him their first day on Illium. He laughed wildly, blood still leaking from the wound in his arm, eyes glowing with happiness. _A kid in a candy store._

Garrus was holed up in a work station near the center of the room, sunk into the ground so mechanics could look underneath Eclipse vehicles. Most of the mercs in the room were occupied. Then someone broke out a rocket launcher. He heard it before he saw it—a whistle through the air. **DANGER! HEAVY ORDNANCE INCOMING!** his visor warned him.

Garrus dropped flat as the rocket shot past, feeling the temperature rise five degrees. He heard the roar as it detonated against a heavy-duty crate behind him. His visor tracked the next one coming, even closer—then he heard three pistol shots—the distinctive, deep retort of a Carnifex. The second rocket impacted above the work station behind him, and Garrus vaulted over the side, turning as he ran to see where the fire had come from. He only saw Shepard, one, last falling body, and a vehicle in the sky a bit too close to the building. Behind him, Jack clenched her fist as another merc screamed and fell into a mess of exposed organs and crumpled armor.

"They're onto us," Tali observed. "Well. You two, anyway."

"Guess we just have two of those faces, Shepard. Or I do."

Shepard smirked, but signaled them to move ahead. "Keep moving. Did you see that ship that flew off?"

Garrus hummed. "Might be in trouble if it comes back."

"Might be a good chance to test out the toy Mordin got us, though," Shepard said, glancing over her shoulder at the M-920 Cain the professor had researched and requisitioned for her. Garrus couldn't deny he wasn't curious to see the thing shoot—the specs said that for all there wasn't any fallout, the sheer speed and mass of the slugs it launched could have a comparative explosive power to a miniature nuke. He'd wondered why Shepard had equipped it to look for Samara and guessed she was as curious as he was.

Grunt chuckled, and they crossed the garage and moved forward into what looked like another checkpoint. There were a couple of computers here. Tali went up to one. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, and her wrist rotated in her omni-tool as she worked, searching for information. "There's a log here," she reported. "Could be the information Samara wants."

She tapped a key, and an audio file played over the speakers. "Well, it's official!" a female voice giggled. "Little, baby Elnora is finally a full-fledged Eclipse merc! I earned my uniform last night when I killed that ridiculous volus. Up close, exploding rounds! Blew the little bastard's suit wide open!" She laughed out loud again. "I can't wait to see some real action! Next time I go home, my friends are gonna be so jealous!"

The recording cut out. Jack scoffed, satisfied. "Elnora was the killer. I knew I smelled murder on that bitch."

Garrus glanced at her. "Takes one to know one, I guess."

She smirked coldly. "You bet your ass."

"Garrus," Shepard said. She nodded at Jack. "You did good, Jack. Nice job spotting her."

Jack subsided. "Anytime, boss lady."

"Detective Anaya would be interested in this," Garrus noted. Tali was already transferring the file over to Shepard. Shepard checked the tag, making sure the original location was preserved in the file.

"We can tip her off," she agreed. "Make sure she can close the case."

They walked through the door on the other side of the room and into a secondary hangar. The Eclipse mercs waiting for them opened fire at once. Jack threw them back in a burst of biotics, but Garrus knew immediately the two women skidding back on the floor were the least of it. He heard the roar of engines, and shouted above the din, "Get down! Gunship above!"

He and Tali dove behind a sturdy, concrete-and-silicon fuel control console as the bullets started up. High-pitched, rapid, deafening gunfire, echoing off the walls and the ceiling. Supply crates were pulverized in seconds, going up in clouds of woodchips and scattered clouds of drugs. The floor cracked in a dozen places.

And Garrus swallowed as the fear flooded him. His cybernetic ear began to throb. The outlines of the room turned fuzzy, and his breath came fast and shallow. He clutched his rifle, compressing his gauntlets into the hard edges, feeling the pressure on his palm.

"Keelah! What the hell do we do?!" Tali was shouting. Sparks showered over their heads. Chips of concrete fell to the floor around them—and the sound of gunfire was getting louder. Closer.

 _Pull it together, idiot! We don't have time for this!_ Garrus evaluated the situation in a moment. To the Eclipse, Tali would be the least threatening enemy in the room. The gunship would prioritize any of them before her, but Garrus and Shepard before anyone else. _We're the ones they've seen, the ones they_ want _to kill._ Shepard had the ordnance to take the gunship down, and another piece of good news was that she was probably off their scopes right now lining up her shot, but without her, that ship was focused on him, and Tali was with him. If either of them were going to survive the next three seconds, they'd need some help.

"When I say so, run!" Garrus told Tali. "Jack, I'm going to need some help!" he shouted. "Alright! Now!"

At the same moment, he and Tali broke in opposite directions from behind the console. The gunfire followed him— **87 . . . 71 . . . 59%**! Then he was caught up in a biotic field and jerked away. His body hurtled through space, away from the stream of bullets, toward the wall. He tumbled head over heels over rifle, under a low ceiling and into cover. His back hit the wall so hard that even in armor, he blacked out momentarily on impact, the air knocked completely from his body. He opened his eyes a second later as vicious, throbbing pain spread through his back from the point of impact and every bone vibrated with protest. He shook himself, climbed to his feet and crouched behind an armored weapons crate.

He was crouching by the corpses of the two Eclipse sisters that had been stationed here. Grunt and Jack were squatting behind a pillar and another armored crate, respectively. Garrus nodded at Jack—she shot him a single glance to check that she hadn't killed him herself saving his life, flipped him off, and turned her eyes back on the gunship.

Having missed a target on its initial pass, the gunship was backing out of the hangar again in order to readjust its weapon—one of the only weaknesses of the model. But as soon as the ship was back out in the open air beside the building and outside of the hangar, Garrus heard a focusing whine and a click.

And then the sky exploded.

The Eclipse gunship blew apart in a blinding flash. The temperature of the hangar rose ten degrees, and a crimson mushroom cloud bloomed a hundred meters outside of the building like a sunset. Shrapnel rained down on the city below. Garrus, standing and walking out into the open, watched it fall. _And three thousand civilians just crapped their pants._ He hoped none of the shrapnel was big enough to hurt the people on the streets below—looking at it, he didn't think so.

"That one hit," he said, trying to keep the awe out of his voice.

Shepard stood beside him, the crimson cloud reflecting pink on her face. She patted the yellow-striped barrel of the Cain. "I think I like this thing."

"No kill quite like overkill?" Garrus suggested.

Shepard made a face at him. "Shut up. You alright?"

Garrus rolled his shoulders. As a matter of fact, he was in a fairly ridiculous amount of pain. "I could be a whole lot worse. Visiting Dr. Chakwas for a spine adjustment is, on the whole, better than being dead." As Jack came up, he smiled at her. "Thanks for the save."

"Hey, I got to throw you into a wall. I'm happy," she said.

Tali had joined them too. "You served as bait so I could get away. If Jack hadn't been there—"

Garrus cut her off, unnerved by the incredulous admiration in the quarian's voice. "But she was. Let's save the tearful professions of gratitude for later. Or never. That works too." He shrugged. "You'd do the same for me."

"I don't know that I could," Tali said frankly. "I froze back there. If it had been up to me, we both would have died, Garrus. Thank you. Really. Thank you."

"Really. Don't mention it," Garrus said.

"I want one of those guns," Grunt said, nodding at the Cain, eyes sparkling. "That was _incredible_."

"Unfortunately, it's pretty much a one-and-done kind of deal," Shepard said regretfully. "Out of charge now, and it takes more time and power to get it ready to fire again than we've got. Any other gunships we'll have to take down the old-fashioned way. Wish we'd brought Goto."

"Kasumi?" Tali said, surprised.

"I once saw her flip up onto a moving gunship and stab right through the cockpit to disable the controls," Shepard said with a wistful smile.

"Remind me not to underestimate her again," Tali noted.

Shepard hummed. "Mmmhmm. Move out."

The Eclipse base was still as they moved on. The mercenaries based here were probably dead behind them or staying away. They walked through the empty halls, checking the corners and the side rooms, looking for consoles and logs or any kind of record they could find that might tell them about this Eclipse cell's people-smuggling operations.

Shepard found something first. "Hold it," she called. Everyone paused to look at her. She was examining a datapad she'd found by a bunch of crates. "This looks like a shipping manifest," she reported. "It shows that Pitne For sold two thousand units of Minagen X-3 to the Eclipse, along with six hundred units of red sand."

Red sand was legal on Illium—but the Minagen X-3 variant the mercenaries had been tossing at them since they'd entered the base was banned. "This isn't the information Samara needs, but it proves that the volus is a criminal," Garrus said.

"Valuable information to the volus," Grunt suggested.

Jack scoffed. "Please. Have you been paying attention? Bet you fifty credits it goes to that cop."

Grunt glanced at Shepard. "Ugh. No bet."

Jack laughed. "Because I'd win. Come on, Girl Scout. Let's get what we need and blow this joint."

Garrus looked around. "What are we going to do about the drugs?" he asked. From everything they'd seen—the people-smuggling, the drugs, the murder—this Eclipse cell was just like the ones Garrus had seen on Omega or worse. "There's a bunch of murdering scum that won't be out on the street after this, but if we leave all this here, someone else will just pick up where these guys left off. We should report the base location to Anaya, too. Have her seize all the drugs and weapons in the base."

"Shit, remind me to toss you harder next time," Jack complained, shaking her head. "You're as bad as _she_ is."

"It's not a bad idea," Shepard said. "Killing criminals is fine. Keeping them from coming back is better." She smiled at Garrus, and they entered the next room.

Once again, they weren't alone. A volus was staring at a can from a vending machine. He popped the tab, then realizing he couldn't drink it, he hurled it into the wall in a blue, biotic cloud. It crumpled and exploded.

"Who the hell is this?" Tali wondered.

The volus turned. His biotics flared. "I am a biotic god!" he proclaimed. "I think things, and they happen. Fear me, lesser creatures! For I am biotics made flesh." His biotics flared again, but his words were slurred, and he staggered as he walked.

"I don't know what drugs you're on, but stay back, and I won't shoot you," Shepard told him.

The volus raised a claw he couldn't hold steady. "You will regret your scandalous words! I am a great wind that will sweep all before me like a . . ." He lost track of his metaphor, then had a stroke of inspiration. "A great wind!" he finished, delighted. "A great, biotic wind! Yes, the asari injecting so many drugs into me was terrifying, but then I began to smell my greatness. They may laugh when I fall over, but they don't know what I know in my head: that I know that I am amazingly powerful. Fear me!"

Tali raised a hand to cover her face, a reaction more instinctive than useful. No one looking at her would know she was fighting a laugh if it wasn't for that hand. Jack wasn't so polite. She openly smirked, and Grunt chuckled.

"Are you part of Pitne For's trade group?" Shepard demanded.

"When I was mortal, I worked for Pitne," the volus confirmed. "Poor soul is probably terrified that I have not returned."

"He hasn't reported your disappearance," Garrus informed the volus. "Probably so his departure won't get delayed."

Jack made a face. "When the chips are down, even your friends will screw you for an extra cred."

"You've had the wrong friends," Shepard shot back at her without turning around.

The volus waved a claw and staggered. "Bah! I will wreak a just revenge upon his people! But first, the leader of these mercenaries is in the next room. I shall toss Wasea about like a rag doll!" He tripped and fell to his knees, then climbed to his feet, too high to actually stand.

"Shepard, this guy couldn't tie his bootlaces, much less fight," Garrus said.

Shepard rolled her eyes. "I know."

The volus was adamant. "I will tear her apart!" he declared. "My biotics are unstoppable!"

"Wasea will tear you apart," Shepard said flatly. "Take a nap. You'll feel better."

The volus turned around, lifting his arms above his head. "Are you mad? I'm unstoppable! Feasting on her biotic-rich blood will—"

Shepard stepped forward, and gently, pushed on the volus's back. He tripped and fell on his face this time, and when he climbed to his feet, he yawned. "But—great wind—biotic god . . . I'm . . . I . . . what was I saying? I'm . . . tired." He stretched and looked back at Shepard. "You . . . may be right. Yes, I'm tired. I'll nap. Destroy the universe later." He staggered back down the hall. Garrus hoped he didn't find it too disturbing to wake up in a room full of mercenary corpses.

 _He'll probably be terrified when he sobers up. But at least he'll live._ "So much for godhood," he remarked.

Shepard shrugged. "I hear it's overrated."

"Useless," Grunt growled.

But the volus hadn't been completely useless. They knew they were outside the leader's office. Grunt ejected a heat sink to redistribute his shots. Garrus rolled his shoulders, trying to redistribute the dull, persistent pain in his back, and shot a glare at Jack. She smirked and took a swig from her canteen. Finally, Shepard nodded, and with Tali and Grunt on either side of her, she entered the room.

Garrus counted them around the room. Looked like eight guards plus Wasea, but these would be the most experienced mercs in the base.

Wasea had a red, tattooed pattern around her eyes and over her crest. She was trying to play it cool—no one was firing yet—but the corner of her mouth twitched down as she took a drink of water and examined a datapad. Her muscles were tight with barely controlled rage. Shepard signaled to them all, and they started to spread out.

"Everything's gone to hell since we smuggled that filthy creature offworld," Wasea remarked, letting her voice carry. "First a justicar shows up. Now you." She put her water and datapad down. "At least I can take pleasure in turning your head into a pulpy mass!"

Her voice twisted into a snarl as her biotics lit up and all her guards opened fire. A barrel came flying at them—Minagen X-3—and Jack bounded forward.

"No way, bitch!"

The barrel changed direction in midair and burst against the right wall. Wasea's laughter soared above the gunfire. "Now we're talking!" she cried. "You're lucky I'm killing you! If you're helping that justicar, you're deep into something terrifying!"

She raised both her arms, and two barrels came at Jack from either side. Jack caught one and tossed it into the other. The barrels came crashing down several meters ahead and to their right, closer to the enemy than to them, but the cloud of toxic chemicals blew out toward them anyway. Garrus had an idea then. He'd helped Grunt modify his guns last week—"Grunt! Concussive blasts at the center of the gas cloud! Help me disperse it!"

Weaving their way through the fire, ducking behind shipments in Wasea's office, he and Grunt worked to clear the way. Tali's drone hounded a heavy with a rocket launcher at the other end of the room, keeping her in close quarters, on the defensive. Shepard was dancing in and out of view, keeping Wasea's guard guessing. Every few seconds, a fireball or a rifle shot came at them from a different angle. "Damn it, where the fuck is she?" one of the asari asked, rolling away from another blast, her barrier completely depleted, and straight into Grunt.

Grinning, he punched her to the floor and blasted her in the face, leaving _her_ head a pulpy mass. Garrus shot down the guard on his flank, fracturing her visor into her face first and following up with another, more penetrating shot.

Jack was dueling Wasea, shotguns and biotics, both their faces twisted in bloodlust and anger. The entire room was charged with the energy they were giving off. "You think you're in _my_ league, human?" Wasea raged. "You're a _child_! A _dead_ one!" One of her throws hit Jack full on and blew her back into a crate, but the moment Jack hit the ground, a wave of energy moved out from her. Grunt braced himself, Garrus jumped, Tali tripped, and Shepard was dark again, but Wasea wasn't ready and staggered back, falling on her ass. Jack was already up, jaw clenched, eyes bloodshot.

"I'm getting really tired of your mouth," she growled. A column of roiling energy crashed down onto Wasea. Garrus's visor tagged her barriers going down, and a blaze of fire turned the air around Wasea violet. Garrus's mandibles tightened. He focused on the guards.

He heard the whine of an incoming rocket and dodged right, but the Eclipse were retreating, moving back. Two mercs were by Wasea, covering her as she climbed to her feet. Her nose was dripping violet. Her armor was smoldering. Tali's drone appeared behind them and let loose. One of them dropped before the other saw it.

"Nothing is faster than Chiktikka vas _Paus_!" Tali cried. The other merc had overloaded the drone in a second, but the damage was done. Wasea and the guard beside her stepped over Tali's kill. Both of them ignited, and two enormous crates, six meters high and three meters wide, and at least that deep, moved aside. The other three remaining guards retreated back, but as Wasea and the fourth guard tried to close the makeshift gates, locking themselves in the back of the room, Tali, Garrus, and Shepard all opened fire. Wasea yelled, and another barrier blossomed around her. She moved backward as her guard fell down, and Grunt charged into the breach. He threw his weight behind his shoulder. In an astonishing feat of strength, he pushed one of the enormous crates back—half a meter. Enough. Jack took the other, sliding it back out of the way and striding forward, steaming biotic energy, panting.

As another Minagen canister came hurtling at Grunt, she yelled, throwing it back at Wasea.

Garrus heard Shepard laugh from close behind him, her quiet, grim amusement, and he could guess what she was thinking as the last four guards shrank back into cover at the very back of the room. Wasea was still changing position, trying to score a hit with her shotgun, but the biotic field around her was fluctuating wildly. Magnified in his visor, he saw that through the chemical cloud, her face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat, and her limbs were trembling. _They're beaten. They know it._ There was a familiar, warm satisfaction in his gut, and he knew he'd sleep well tonight. Another pack of murdering criminals gone. If Anaya and her placebo office could only manage to hold on to their ordnance and drugs, at the end of this week, Nos Astra would be a little better off for their visit.

He saw someone aiming a rocket launcher at Tali over some barrels in the back, took their shields. Her curse was enough to alert Tali to the danger. Tali swung around, but Shepard had already taken the shot. Wasea fired three blasts at her, but Shepard vaulted over two barrels, heading toward Grunt as she faded out. Gunfire followed her trajectory, but Garrus saw Shepard's heat signature double back, saw her outline crouch by Tali and raise her rifle to her shoulder again.

Wasea, still trapped in the gas cloud at the back of the room, was now leaking violet blood from her eyes as well as her nose. "You think it's time to stop playing with our food?" Garrus suggested as Grunt caught one of the last guards in an unguarded moment and she went down.

"Ugh, fine," Jack grunted. She clenched her fist, drew it to her chest, and Wasea, barriers down, twitching uncontrollably, floated up into the air. Jack jerked her head at Shepard, and the commander took the shot, putting the merc boss out of her misery. It was over in another five seconds.

Jack looked down at Wasea's corpse coolly for about a second. Her biotics dissipated, and she turned away. "Bitch," she muttered.

The room smelled like gunpowder and chemicals, asari and human blood. Shepard's mouth twisted into something halfway between a smile and a grimace as she looked at the grisly scene, but she nodded at Jack as she walked back toward Wasea's desk. "Jack, Grunt, Garrus, I want you all to see Dr. Chakwas when we're done here," she said.

"That toss back there?" Jack demanded. "I'm fine!"

Grunt looked down at his scabbed-over arm. "Hurt more to see the doctor than to let it go at this point," he remarked.

"And Dr. Chakwas will kill me if Jack didn't," Garrus told them both. "It's routine. Take some fire, a bad toss into a wall, you go see the doctor. If you're as fine as you say you are, she'll give you a clean bill of health and that'll be the end of it. But if you've got some broken ribs or a wound might get infected, it's better to know and treat it now than when she has to take you out of action for three days. It's a pain, but it's better not to whine and get it over with."

Jack made a disgusted noise, but didn't argue further. "Got it," Shepard said, shaking a datapad. "Let's get out of here. I've had enough of this place."

* * *

Samara had to be one of the strangest detainees Garrus had ever seen. She was sitting at least a meter off the ground in the decorative alcove behind Detective Anaya. She wasn't in cuffs, still had all her guns, and was shimmering with biotics. There was a perceptible energy current in the room that set Garrus's teeth on edge. Samara looked like she was meditating, but it wasn't making Anaya feel any better. As Garrus watched, her eyes ran over the same line on her screen four times. Her finger tapped the cursor nervously instead of scrolling, and there was a tic in her jaw.

Shepard nodded at Detective Anaya, walked past her, and handed Samara the datapad they'd recovered from Wasea's office. "I've got the name of the ship. Your fugitive left here two days ago on the _AML Demeter_."

The biotic field around Samara dissipated into the air, and the energy current around Garrus's skin dropped off to a comfortable level. Samara smiled with actual warmth. "Shepard, you impress me," she said, sliding off her perch to her feet. "You've fulfilled your part of the bargain, and I will fulfill mine." She bowed to Anaya. "I am ready to leave immediately if that will satisfy your superiors, Detective."

Anaya nodded. "You're free to go, Justicar. It has been an honor having you in my station." Her entire body had relaxed, and she grinned. "And it's nice you didn't kill me, too."

"The _Normandy_ is docked near the trading floor," Shepard said. "We'll see you aboard."

Samara held up a hand. "I must be sworn to your service, so that I am never forced to choose between your orders and the code."

Garrus understood. If Samara's code would have compelled her to kill Detective Anaya even for following her orders to detain her, having her on the _Normandy_ could be an issue. Who knew what the Justicar Code would say about working with people like Jack or even Jacob and Miranda? In the next few weeks, Samara would have to do anything Shepard said, but she was bound to her code first.

Samara knelt in front of Shepard. She lit up blue with biotics again. Her eyes glowed, and once again, Garrus felt the sizzling sensation his scales were about to crawl off of his body to get away from all the dark energy she had harnessed. He hadn't ever seen such focused biotic control. Usually, he was pretty confident facing off with biotics—they all had tells, signals, pressure points you could disable to take them out of action. But he wasn't sure he could take Samara out in a fight. _On the one hand—good. If I can't take her out, odds are our enemies can't either. On the other—I'm really glad she's swearing this oath._

"By the code, I will serve you, Beth Shepard," Samara said. Her voice echoed and vibrated with her biotics, almost like subharmonics, but there was nothing to her undertones but power. Garrus swallowed. "Your choices are my choices. Your morals are my morals. Your wishes are my code." Her biotics flared out without a single movement on her part and faded away.

Jack huffed. "Not bad." Tali looked at Garrus, and he caught her amusement at Jack's jealousy like a bubbly wave. _Not like she took out an asari mercenary boss almost entirely on her own a half hour ago or anything._

Anaya had stood, and she leaned against her desk, arms folded, looking at Shepard speculatively. "I never thought I'd see a justicar swear an oath like that."

Samara climbed to her feet. "If you make me do anything extremely dishonorable, I may need to kill you when I am released from my oath," she informed Shepard in an even, serene tone.

Jack snorted. "Don't worry about it. She's not the type."

But Shepard inclined her head in a gesture of respect, taking her cues from Anaya. "I can see that this is a very important oath, Samara. Thank you."

Samara seemed pleased by this. She smiled again. "Truly, the life of a justicar can get lonely. I admit, I am looking forward to serving with a company of honorable heroes." She looked around, smiling at the rest of them.

Shepard smirked. "'Honorable heroes' may be pushing it."

"Shall we return to your ship?" Samara asked.

"In a minute. I need to speak to the detective."

Anaya's forehead crinkled, and amenable, she walked back behind her desk and sat down. "Thanks for getting Samara out of my district," she said. "I can tell my granddaughters about meeting a justicar, and you've just upped my chances of living long enough to have grandkids."

"Going to see what else we can do for you," Shepard said. She floated the confession file off her omni-tool and over to Anaya's console. "I have proof that Eclipse killed the volus merchant."

"Let's see what you've got here," Anaya said. She played the file, and frowned. "Interesting, but I can't verify it. It would be inadmissible."

Samara stepped forward. "I vouch for Shepard and any evidence she brings forward."

Anaya made a note. "I accept the judgment of the justicar. We'll be glad to close the book on this one."

Garrus restrained the impulse to roll his eyes. _Wonder what happens when the justicars aren't trustworthy._

"Never heard of this Elnora," Anaya mused. "Sounds like she was just starting her career. Did you take her down?"

"In the raid on the base, yes," Shepard confirmed.

"Thanks again. Okay, enough with all the congratulations. I've still got a spiraling crime rate."

Shepard regarded Anaya. "Yeah, about that. You should probably head back to the base at some point or other. Seize the guns and drugs the Eclipse had there. Keep anyone else from using them."

"Don't worry, I've already requested a team," Anaya told her. "We'll ship them to the holding facilities downtown. They're a little more secure than this office."

"And the volus, Pitne For. He's dirty." Shepard handed Anaya the other datapad they'd found in the Eclipse base. "You know it. Here's the proof. He smuggled in the Eclipse's stupidly toxic red sand and illegal weapons tech."

Anaya tilted her head, impressed. "I'll arrest him and his cohorts. This is a big help, Shepard. I can't do much to thank you, but we do have a small discretionary bounty fund." She typed a few lines on a document, and pressed a button. Shepard's omni-tool buzzed. "Take this."

Shepard looked at the readout. "Thank you, Detective. Glad we could help." She glanced at Samara, her lips tugging upward. "Now we can leave."

* * *

Back at the _Normandy_ , Shepard stopped in the CIC before heading off with Samara for the usual tour and mission briefing. She took a long, measured look at Grunt. He was getting twitchy again, tapping his fingers against the barrel of his shotgun and grinding his teeth.

"Grunt—don't leave Dr. Chakwas's office after she gets that bullet out. Wait for me there," she said. "I think you and I need to have a talk."

"Yes," Grunt agreed. Without disarming or looking back at them, he stomped off toward the elevator. The rest of them watched him go.

"What was that all about?" Tali asked.

"Beats me," Jack said. "And you guys call me the psycho. If he goes off the rails downstairs, I'll tear his arms off."

"As nice as that is, I think we need to find a less permanent solution," Tali said drily.

"He's trying to keep it under control," Garrus observed. "You can see him reining it in. But something's wrong."

"Try not to worry too much about it," Shepard told them. "I'll have a chat with Grunt, Dr. Chakwas, and EDI later. We'll take care of it."

"Whatever. It's not my problem," Jack shrugged, heading toward the armory. After a moment, Garrus and Tali followed her. Garrus broke off with Jack from there to go see Chakwas as ordered, after promising Tali once again they would take an hour or two to enjoy their shore leave before it was time to ship out.

He was distracted from Dr. Chakwas's fussing over everyone in her med bay—and his amusement at how completely unintimidated she was by Jack or Grunt—when his omni-tool buzzed. Excitement surged through him like a current. "Doctor, excuse me," he said. "Are we good?"

"Jack's biotic throw doesn't seem to have disrupted your cybernetic implant," she said, shutting off her own omni-tool, "You didn't hit your head, and you don't have any broken bones or symptoms of whiplash. Still, Commander Shepard did well to have you come to me. It could have been a great deal worse, but you were lucky."

"Lucky, my ass!" Jack scoffed. "Saving someone's life is new for me, but I know better than to fuck it up by ripping them in half. He's fine 'cause _I_ wanted him to be." She blinked. "Shit, what the hell is wrong with me?"

"You really want us to answer that?" Garrus teased.

"Fuck you," Jack retorted. "Next time you can pull your own ass away from the gunship."

"More gunships, Garrus?" Dr. Chakwas chided him.

"I like to stay on the edge."

"If only that weren't true," the doctor sighed.

"As fun as this is, if there's nothing else, I should probably get back to the battery."

Jack shook her head. "Shit. Only you spend as much time on duty on shore leave as you do when we're in the sky. You need to get laid, is all I'm saying."

"He _needs_ a better fight," Grunt observed from his perch on the medical cot across the bay. "When's the next time we fight Collectors? I'm ready!" He pounded a fist into his other palm.

" _You_ need to hold on. There's a bullet in your arm, and regeneration or not, you're not leaving here until it's out and Shepard and I have _both_ cleared you for duty," Chakwas said sternly. "Garrus, however, is free to go. Now Jack, I've heard you all report, but I want you to tell me more about the chemical in that base."

Garrus waved goodbye and walked out of the med bay, trying not to walk too fast. But when he pulled up the message he'd received on his omni-tool in Chakwas's office, the familiar address was from Palaven, not Illium.

 **What the hell?**

Garrus told himself he wasn't disappointed. It had only been a day since he'd seen Liara. Too soon for her to have found anything. Sidonis wasn't going to be easy to trace.

His omni-tool buzzed again. **G? Are you in? Where the hell did you get the creds?**

Garrus opened a new message. **I told you I was doing some consultant work.**

The reply came immediately. **Enough that you can afford a 1750 credit write-off?**

 **I can do it, Sol. I'll send more when I can.**

 **We need the money. Just tell me it's not illegal.**

Garrus hesitated. The Council had banished Shepard's operations to the Terminus systems for a reason. Cerberus was a recognized terrorist organization in Council space. But he wasn't in Council space, and in the Terminus systems, almost everything was legal. _And when it all comes out, when they realize what we're doing here, they'll thank us._ **It's not illegal.**

 **Just not Hierarchy-approved. Or anything you can actually tell us about.**

There was a long pause, and then another message came through. **Can you at least tell us where you are? That you're safe?**

Garrus sighed. **I've got some good people with me, Sol. Some of the best in the galaxy. And we're doing good work.**

There was silence for a long time. Then— **Mom had a good day today. She made lunch and everything. We watched a vid with Dad. It was nice.**

Garrus frowned. **You were home all day?**

 **The nurse had to attend her sister's wedding. I took a personal day. Relax. Things aren't so bad I'm following in your footsteps just yet.** A second later— **We missed you. The money's fine. Let us know you haven't gotten yourself killed yet. But I don't know when we'll have another day like this one. The doctors have her on a new medicine. They said it might give her some more clarity. But we've heard that before. There's no real cure for Corpalis.**

 **How are you holding up?** Garrus asked.

Solana's reply was caustic. **How do you think? We're doing as well as we can. Look, I'll talk to you later. Thanks for the help. Such as it is. Be careful.**

Garrus shut off his omni-tool. He braced himself on the battery console. He had to take a shower. He had to eat something and figure out the next time he would have a chance to go argue with the Illium armorers. He needed to calibrate the gun, keep it in shape for when they flew out. He wanted to check back in with Shepard—see what was happening with Grunt. He did want to schedule something with Tali—she deserved a few hours of fun before the chance was gone.

But he couldn't move for a long time.

* * *

 **A/N: Grunt's issues continue! Chakwas returns! (I love Chakwas.) And this is a real Jack feature, considering it's supposed to be Samara's recruitment. I've found that Jack just plays off of Garrus very well. Samara will have moments to shine later on, though, never fear—though really Jack and Garrus could almost be described as frenemies by now, and due to Samara's reserve I don't ever see Garrus getting as close to her.**

 **If you've got something to say, please leave a review. I love to hear from my readers, whether it's praise, constructive criticism, or just a random remark about something that got them thinking.**

 **Best Always,**

 **LMS**


	17. Auld Lang Syne: Many a Weary Foot

XVII

Many a Weary Foot

The next morning, Garrus did actually have a few hours to kill, but Tali was busy—overseeing a shielding upgrade for the _Normandy_. She told him about the specs over breakfast—revolutionary cyclonic technology that didn't rely upon absorbing the energy of a blast but instead thrust it off to the side. A ship could withstand a lot more heavy fire, Tali said, and she was working with Ken Donnelly to optimize the power efficiency. "He's very talented, for a human." she told Garrus. A passing servicewoman shot her a look, and she ducked her head. "I mean, considering he never grew up on the Migrant Fleet." she added hastily.

Garrus laughed at her. "And you accuse them of bigotry," he teased.

"It's just fact," Tali protested. "Quarians have to be good with ships and technology. Our existence depends on it. Everyone is trained in suit maintenance, emergency ship repair, salvage techniques. Most members of other species just don't get that kind of education. They don't need it. There's nothing wrong with that."

Garrus wagged his finger at her mockingly. "Keep digging, Tali. I'm sure you'll eventually find your way out." It was true, of course, but she felt so bad he couldn't resist. She lost patience with him and flipped her dirty straw at him. He dodged, grinning, and finished his breakfast.

He left the ship and wandered through the streets. Shepard wanted him to meet her and the professor midmarket after lunch to follow up on a lead Liara had given her about their assassin. Garrus tried not to feel too irritated Liara had found her information first. Finding Krios _was_ more time sensitive than finding Sidonis. No one knew when the Collectors could hit the next colony, and they knew where Krios was this week, but next week he could be gone. But after they left Illium—he had no idea if they'd be going closer to Sidonis or across the galaxy from him.

Every second that bastard was still breathing was an itch at the back of his neck, a bitter taste in his mouth. Despite everything, he was where he needed to be, where he wanted to be. He knew that. But if he was going to die in the next few months, he wanted to know Sidonis was dead too. That Melenis, Erash, Monteague—all of them had justice.

Waiting in an armorer's shop for the assistant to come out of the back with the tech he'd asked to see, Garrus couldn't help keying a message to the obscure address he'd trawled the extranet for the evening after they'd rescued Oriana Lawson. **Any progress? –GV**

After reviewing all his options at the armorer's, Garrus accepted the fact that he was going to have to settle for a patch instead of an entirely new hardsuit, and it was going to take almost all the credits he had left. Garrus resigned himself to Gardener's cooking for most of the rest of shore leave and left his hardsuit with the shop tech, glad he'd anticipated this outcome before leaving the ship. He walked out in one of his new suits, feeling strangely naked without his armor. _When was the last time you left home without it? Eight months? Longer?_

He'd left his rifles back on the _Normandy_ , too, so all he had was the modified Phalanx he'd been playing with for a while, holstered and belted instead of clipped to his hip. He walked up a nearby flight of stairs to an elevated street and parked at the railing, watching the skyline, the skycars flying to parties and business meetings and universities all over town. He tried to classify them by planet of origin and was surprised by how many human designs he saw. Human ship design hadn't developed a distinctive aesthetic style yet, but just like their politics, their engines had some power. It made sense that the Hierarchy might be interested in their ships and skycars—after all, the _Normandy_ had been designed as a Hierarchy-Alliance collaboration—and the salarians were all about efficiency, but it was interesting to see so many human-made vehicles on an asari world. For all they were relative newcomers to the galactic scene, humans had made a big impact in their three decades. A lot of people didn't like it, thought humans were pushy, imperialistic. So volatile and aggressive sometimes that they could be smaller, weaker krogan—but more numerous and a hell of a lot smarter. Dangerous.

They weren't challenging the Hierarchy's military power just yet, but Garrus figured it was just as well the asari had stepped in to end the Relay 314 Incident. As far as he could tell, most humans weren't out to conquer the galaxy, which was more than you could say for most krogan—but they were demanding a seat at the table, and making advances in weapons and technology every year to back up those demands. _I don't know. Maybe they're good for us. Dad says the Hierarchy has kicked things into high gear since the humans came on the scene after a couple centuries of complacency, and even the asari are starting to talk._

 _Hell, if I survive this and go back to the Hierarchy, they might want me in intelligence. Fill them in on human military operations._ Garrus tapped his fingers against the railing. He knew one thing: Shepard wasn't standard human military. Shepard was something else.

His omni-tool buzzed then, and Garrus turned his wrist over to read a terse, irritated message from T'Soni. **Give me time. I have an extensive network on- and off-planet, but finding one man in the entire galaxy isn't easy, and you're not my only client. I'll contact you when I have something. –L.**

Garrus shut off his omni-tool and paced away from the balcony. "Excuse me," someone said. "Excuse me, sir."

He stopped to see who was talking to him, a young asari dressed in a black-and-white uniform. She held out a steaming glass of ariita to him. The strong, spicy scent cleared his head—but there were other spices in the scent he didn't recognize—and a slight chemical afterburn. "Compliments of your friend, sir," she said, nodding at another asari he'd never seen before seated at a table outside a coffee shop next to his armorer. She tipped him a smirk and a wave, and swept her hand toward the chair across from her.

Something about the way she was looking at him made Garrus uneasy, and on a hunch, he tipped the glass back and pretended to take a sip before sitting down. She smiled wider. "My name is Neryn," she said quietly. "You looked lonely. Thought you might want some company."

"Maybe I like being alone," Garrus returned, pretending to drink again.

Neryn's eyes glimmered. "Maybe you do, but they tell me the Nos Astra ariita roast isn't something to miss, especially on a morning like this."

"You often buy gourmet ariita for strangers, Neryn?" Garrus asked. "You never asked my name."

"I don't need to know your name. Your face is enough, Archangel. Don't bother trying to move." The asari's tone turned menacing, hateful, though she didn't raise her voice above a light conversational volume. "Your ariita is strong enough to mask any poison, and there's enough toxin running through you right now to down a krogan. You'll start to feel it any second now. In two minutes you'll be unable to call for help. By the time help gets here, it'll be too late."

Garrus tensed all over, letting her see what she expected, letting her talk.

Neryn laughed. "I wasn't here for you today," she exulted. "I was here to take out the COO of Trion Corp. He stops here on his break every morning for a snack. Our clients want to destabilize the competition. But when I call ahead and say I saw Archangel in the café, my boss will set up a sniper in the alley on the suit's way home. They'll understand the opportunity was too good to miss." Her eyes roamed over Garrus's scar hungrily. "You were so invisible on Omega, but at least Tarak did some good before you shot him down. Now every merc in the Terminus knows to watch for that ugly face. I can't believe I'm the one that gets to take you out. You killed my sister. Two days ago."

Garrus twitched his arms, ostensibly reacting to the poison he hadn't drunk, but really moving his hand to his gun. "Enyala's crew killed civilians and were going after a kid," he said, in as conversational of a tone as Neryn. "You one of the two that got away, or are you from another Eclipse unit?" Neryn froze then. Her eyes narrowed. Garrus grinned. "Oh, am I supposed to be foaming at the mouth by now?"

Neryn's biotics flared, and she lunged across the table, but Garrus was ready for her. He caught her arm and dug his fingers into the hard knot of muscle beneath it and behind her shoulder. She cried out, and her biotics went dead. Garrus leveled his pistol at her head as he heard the waitress inside gasped. A couple of asari at a nearby table jumped up and hid behind it, whimpering.

"Nothing to worry about," Garrus called loudly. "Just a little attempted murder." He pushed Neryn back into her seat. "And an actual one." he added under his breath.

He walked around the table, squeezing Neryn's arm and shoulder all the way. "You bastard!" she gasped, tears of fear and anger leaking from her eyes. "Get spaced, asshole!"

"Someday, maybe," Garrus conceded. "But not today, I think. Now there are two ways this goes, Neryn: the gun," he pointed his pistol at her forehead to demonstrate, "or the glass." He nodded at the ariita she had bought him. "Most poisons are poisons to anyone, unless you're a vorcha, a krogan, or a volus, but you'd know that, wouldn't you? And if you have a dextro allergy, you might go even faster. Painful, no doubt, but you'd at least die with some dignity."

"You're insane," Neryn spat. "A sick, sadistic—you killed my sister! Her entire unit!"

"She was a murdering criminal. And so are you. The gun? Or the glass?"

Neryn tried to break free. Garrus twisted her shoulder in his hand and felt it pop outside of its socket. She groaned, and her body shook in a helpless sob. "Just get it over with, you son of a bitch," she said.

Garrus tilted his head. "If that's what you want." He fired.

The asari's body collapsed on the café table. Blood ran off the stone mosaic tabletop, dripped of the side, and started to pool on the sidewalk. Behind one of the other outdoor tables, one of the two asari had started to cry.

Garrus holstered his pistol, and using his talons, he ripped a section of the corpse's high collar away. Sure enough, in one of the most generic spots was a black, blazing tattoo of an "E," the asari's uniform even on an assassination mission. He left the tattoo exposed and fumbled in her pockets. He found a credit chit, brought it out, and examined the currency. With a twinge of regret, he left the 100-credit chit face-up on the table. "Did you poison the glass for her, or were you just hired to bring it to me?" he demanded of the waitress who'd just walked out of the café. She was pale and trembling, training a tiny pistol on him. He knew at a glance she couldn't shoot it straight.

"I don't know what you're talking about! She gave me a tip to get your attention and you—you killed her! You just—you just killed her!"

Garrus studied her and decided she was telling the truth. "She tried to kill me first, and she was planning another murder here today," he told her. "When the cops get here, have them run her prints and do a tox screen on the contents of this glass. And tell them to put a protection detail on the COO of Trion Corp. Might want to issue a warning to the whole company. One of their competitors hired an Eclipse cell to destabilize them."

The waitress's gun lowered about three centimeters as she realized he wasn't about to kill anyone else. "Who—who are you?"

"I'm no one. I was never here. Understand?" It wasn't a threat, but she didn't need to know that. The more the waitress knew about him, the more someone else could try to get out of her later.

"I—I—yes. Just go."

Garrus nodded and walked away.

He took a circuitous route back to the armorer's, through back alleys and foreign shops and side streets, but still got to the armorer five minutes after he'd heard the sirens. He wanted to be out of the neighborhood before the search order went out—just in case the waitress or the two terrified asari gave the cops a decent description. The shopowner was irritated at the rush, but business was slow, and Garrus walked out in ten more minutes with his patched armor and headed for the midmarket crowds.

It was luck, just bad luck that the Eclipse assassin had caught sight of him, caught him alone. But they knew his face. The sooner they were off Illium the better.

* * *

An hour and a half later, he caught up with Shepard and the professor outside the cargo shipping office rendezvous point. Shepard took one look at him and checked. "What's eating you?"

"Rough morning. Vacation isn't agreeing with me."

"This something we need to talk about?"

"Probably, but it's not priority. I'll fill you in back on the _Normandy_."

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Shepard asked rhetorically. She sighed. "Come on."

There wasn't anything special about the shipping office Liara had directed them to. It was small, tucked away in the corner of the markets with outdated décor in the windows. A bell chimed when they walked inside, but no one greeted them. There were just three or four cubicles scattered across the floor and a selection of brown, cardboard boxes and two different-sized security crates set up for display on a dais at the end of the room. Shepard looked at the black-and-white nameplates on the cubicles, and walked into one without ceremony. "Seryna?"

Garrus walked in with Mordin, and saw the asari at the desk look Shepard up and down. She smirked. "Who wants to know?"

Garrus fought the familiar twinge of annoyance. Sometimes it seemed like two-thirds of the people they ran into wanted Shepard. _The ones that aren't trying to shoot us, anyway, and they're decreasing fast._ But people wanting Shepard was nothing new.

 _And at least she's always oblivious or completely uninterested._ Shepard cut straight to business."Name's Shepard. Liara T'Soni said you might have information on Thane Krios."

In a flash, the asari wasn't interested in flirting, either. She shouted at a coworker across the way. "Tana, cover for me." She motioned for Shepard, Garrus, and the professor to follow her—out of the office and into the markets. Garrus looked around. _Camera blind spot, too close to a busy street to be easily overheard. This woman knows what she's doing._ Seryna turned to face them head on, arms crossed, legs shoulder-width apart in a clear defensive posture. "Yeah, I know who Thane Krios is. I might've passed him some information, but I didn't hire him. What do you want to know?"

Shepard's mouth turned down, but she held up a hand. "Relax. I'm not here to get you in trouble. We're just trying to find him."

Seryna snorted. "I can tell you, but you won't stop him. When he contacted me, I checked up on him. The man never gives up on a job. I ran security for Nassana Dantius. Then I found out she was having people killed to cover up her dirty secrets. She fired me when I confronted her." The asari shrugged, her eyes cold. "Her loss. I might've been good enough to stop Thane from taking her down."

Shepard tilted her head. "Nassana Dantius . . . Garrus, do we know her?"

Garrus had been trying to place the name himself. He snapped his fingers, remembering. "We killed her sister the slaver scouting out the cluster Liara was in. When we went to tell her, she tried to bribe us to keep it quiet."

Shepard snapped back, satisfied. "That's it."

Syrena looked impressed. "Well, you know what she's capable of, then. She has even more power here in Nos Astra. She uses it to keep her friends in check and her enemies dead."

Shepard regarded their new informant. "If you worked there, you must have an idea of what Thane's opposition will be."

Syrena nodded. "Eclipse mercs. High-tech killers. Undisciplined, but very well equipped. They don't much care who they kill, as long as they're paid for it. Thane has quite a reception waiting for him. I told him all I knew. He didn't seem worried."

Garrus looked grimly at Shepard. _Eclipse. On the plus side, if this is the cell that Neryn was from, we might get a break. If not—well, we'll keep them guessing, anyway._

Shepard didn't even know about Neryn yet, but she wasn't happy, either. But her jaw was set, determined. They knew where their target was going now, which meant they had a definite location for the first and perhaps only time. "So where do I find Thane?"

"The Dantius Towers," Seryna answered. "Penthouse level of Tower One. There's a second tower, still under construction. If Thane is smart, he'll go in from there."

"But Nassana won't just let us in."

Seryna shook her head. "She's as smart as she is paranoid. No one's getting in or out of there without a fight. I can get you in, but you only get one shot. You better be ready."

That was a surprise. Shepard's eyes narrowed. "You're just offering your help. No strings attached?"

Seryna's lips turned upward, but the expression was nothing like a smile. "You're going to look for Thane. Nassana's mercenaries will try to stop you. At the least, you'll distract her guards. Take a little fire, give Thane a clear shot. I didn't hire him to kill Nassana, but I won't shed any tears when she gets what's coming to her."

 _Cold. I'm glad we're not on her bad side._

Shepard pressed Seryna for more information on the man they were after, but she didn't know much—except that the assassin had apparently gone rogue. He was apparently going after Dantius on his own, under the impression that killing her would make this world a better place. That put Shepard's nose out of joint, but Garrus was happy to hear their assassin apparently had some sort of code of ethics. They needed the best, so they'd hired Massani and Goto, brought on Jack, used Grunt, were working with Cerberus—all to defeat the Reapers. An assassin that knew the right people to kill was better than another Zaeed, just in it for the credits.

They arranged to meet Seryna by the taxi stand later that night. Before they went, Shepard wanted to pull in a little more muscle. If they were going up against Eclipse mercs again, they needed to be ready.

* * *

"I don't like this," Shepard said as they walked the streets late that night. "You're too hot, Garrus. This is too dangerous."

"Did you miss the mercs describing you in Wasea's base yesterday?" Garrus demanded. "You're as hot as I am right now. Besides, I've got specific orders from Miranda not to let you fight Archangel's war without Archangel."

Shepard bristled. "Miranda doesn't give the orders, I do, and we're not fighting Archangel's war, we just keep running into Archangel's enemies."

"The two of you are not alone," Samara broke in with authority. "I have sworn to fight beside you, Shepard. I will protect you both from the Eclipse sisters, with my life if the need arises."

"Hey, no one's dying," Jacob said. "We get in, get Krios, and get out. No reason this needs to turn into a bloodbath."

"You say that now," Shepard said sourly. She contemplated Garrus. "I should order you back to the _Normandy_ right now," she "Bring in Massani or Goto instead."

"Are you going to?" Garrus challenged her.

Neither of them was as good at high-powered precision ops as he was, and she knew it. If possible, Shepard's expression soured still further. "Crap. No. But damn it, Vakarian, watch your ass. You are not expendable."

"Well. Not yet anyway." Garrus murmured. Shepard glared at him and stopped at the taxi stand. She keyed a message into her omni-tool, folded her arms, and leaned back on her left leg, scowling.

"Damn, I'd hate to be those mercs," Taylor muttered after a moment of awkward silence. "Krios, either."

"Garrus essential to ground operations," Mordin reasoned. "Stability, flexibility. Now also _liability_." He breathed in, eyeing Shepard. "Still. Has a point. No more than you, Commander. Perhaps better to outsource operation. Entrust command to team member off mercenary ladar."

"Yeah, the problem with _that_ is that the team members trained to head up operations have both been seen with us too," Shepard snarled. "Even if it didn't shake up the op enough someone got killed anyway, I'm not sure how much safer Taylor or Lawson would actually be."

Taylor smiled, but shook his head. "I'm good, but I can't do what you do, Commander. I'm no Miranda, either. I ran squads of ordinary soldiers, back in the day, but this is on a whole other level."

"Everyone's got to grow sometime, Mr. Taylor," Shepard said, looking at the skyline. She jerked her head, and all of them straightened as a skycar sedan flew into the dock. "For now you've got the pleasure of our company."

Seryna's skycar was sleek and unobtrusive, gun-metal gray under the streetlight with shielded windows. It _looked_ like she'd worked in security. When Seryna pulled up by the curb, she was as casual about inviting them in as if this was an ordinary rideshare. Shepard took shotgun while Garrus, Taylor, the professor, and Samara crowded into the back. The professor and Taylor both looked as uncomfortable as Garrus felt, but Samara's face was as serene as if a salarian doctor hadn't been half-sitting in her lap, his gun pressing into her armor.

The radio was silent, and as they flew, Seryna gave them the rundown. "The towers are heavily guarded, and you'll find more resistance closer to the penthouse. So, this assassin—planning to stop him?"

"I haven't decided yet," Shepard said from the front seat. "I just need to make sure he survives."

Seryna hummed, but didn't venture an opinion. She nodded out the window at a brightly lit pair of buildings, sleek constructions of glass and chrome. Garrus saw a crane hanging over the half-finished skyscraper. "There they are: the Dantius Towers. You'll have to get up to the second tower and cross the bridge to the penthouse," Seryna told them, nodding at the overhead bridge that connected the two towers. Eventually it would be enclosed, but right now it was open to the air, and Garrus's visor picked up rebar and cement blocks stacked across it. "Her mercs will fight you every step, but it's your best chance."

"Why don't we just save time and take the shuttle up?" Shepard asked. She sounded annoyed, and she shot a look over her shoulder at Taylor, as if to say, _Didn't I tell you?_

 _Nothing's ever easy._

Seryna eyed Shepard, amused. "She's got mercs with rockets just waiting for you to try. You'd get maybe halfway up before they shot you down. Besides, your assassin won't go in that way. Best to go in low."

"Then set us down," Shepard told her.

"Hold on!" Seryna cried. She exited the traffic stream to head for the no-landing zone right in front of Nassana's building. Lights flashed in the glass windows above. Seryna was nervous. Her left hand drifted down below the seat. _Probably has a pistol there_ , Garrus reflected. Spotlights passed over the pavement. Garrus winced against the beam.

"Don't linger too long," Seryna instructed them, opening the doors. The five of them piled out. Seryna closed the doors right away, but before she flew off, she lowered a window. "Good luck, Shepard," she said. Then she pulled hard on the controls, pushed her foot down to the floor, and the skycar rocketed away.

"Guess Nassana's not the friendliest ex-boss," Taylor observed.

"No kidding," Shepard said. "Look out!" She drew her Locust, and Garrus turned to see two FENRIS mechs barreling out of the entrance toward them. "If we've got their attention, let's keep it," she muttered, and opened fire.

The glass doors of Dantius Tower Two shattered. Garrus moved his omni-tool with Shepard's, and both FENRIS mechs went up in an explosion of sparks, still skidding forward with the force of their momentum. Three Eclipse mercs ran out of the hallway. As soon as they raised their weapons, Samara and Taylor threw up barriers to provide temporary cover. Garrus fired with Mordin and Shepard, and the Eclipse fell to the ground.

Shepard signaled for Samara to take point and move forward, and they followed her into the building, moving single file to decrease the size of the target until they were in cover. Then they fanned out to cover the lobby.

Garrus didn't like the look of the place. There were smears of blood on the smooth, stone floor. Two uniformed corpses up against the walls, full of bullet holes. No weapons, no armor. These were civilians. It put a sour taste in his mouth. "The assassin or Nassana's mercs?" Shepard asked.

"If Thane Krios has done this, someday I may have to kill him," Samara said coolly.

"Sloppy. Wasteful," Mordin remarked with distaste. "Too much collateral damage. Amateur. Not work of accomplished assassin."

They crossed the lobby to the elevator. Granted, they'd started things off on the wrong foot with his news about the merc earlier today, but Garrus was still fairly certain their missions weren't usually this depressing until later. There was another body by the elevator doors—salarian, sitting in a pool of green blood and clutching a nasty stomach wound. But Garrus's visor tagged him hot—and as they neared, his eyelids pulled back. ". . . help," he whispered.

"He's still alive!" Garrus cried, but Shepard had already dropped to her knees beside the man. Garrus took up position at her back, watching the way they had come, the outlet to the stairs with Taylor and Samara.

Mordin knelt beside Shepard, already dialing the paramedics and pulling up a medi-gel application. "I can't feel my legs!" the salarian told them. "My chest is killing me!"

Shepard moved aside to let Mordin work. "Who did this to you? And why?"

The salarian stared past her. He wasn't seeing her. "We're just night workers," he said. "Nassana sent them after us. She sent the mechs to round us up, but we didn't hear. They just started shooting!"

"They just attacked you?" Shepard demanded.

She'd heard someone was planning an attack, and paranoid as she was, she'd just shut the building down and ordered her mercs to shoot everyone in the building. It was crazy, selfishness so extreme you could only call it evil. "We were too slow," the salarian said. His eyes moved toward the other bodies in the room, and he shuddered, winced, and coughed. "It was horrible! Everyone . . . screaming. The mercs said there was no time. Nassana wanted us out of the way, immediately." He was shaking now, seizing up. "Then—the dogs!" he burst out into another coughing fit. It was wet and violent. There was blood on his hand, more blood gushing from his stomach wound.

"Lie still," Mordin told him. "Can't help them. Can survive to remember them later. Let medi-gel coagulate the wound. Wait for paramedics. Live."

The salarian looked at the professor then. "Thank you. I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"Take your time," Shepard cautioned the salarian. "Just focus on breathing."

The salarian shook his head. "I'll be fine. Find the other workers. Help them."

Shepard nodded. "Why would Nassana kill her own workers?"

It was a rhetorical question, but the worker answered anyway. "To her we're expendable. But I didn't realize she was that ruthless. My friends, coworkers, slaughtered! They were jumping off ledges to escape the dogs!"

"Any idea how many mercs Nassana's got up there?" Taylor asked.

"A lot," the salarian told them. "Dozens of them are wandering around here all day. You'll find more of them the further up you go."

"We need to get up to the penthouse," Shepard explained. "Any suggestions?"

The salarian gestured at the elevator next to him. "Take the elevator to the upper floors. The bridge between the two towers isn't finished, but if you're careful—"he broke off, uncertain. "Watch out for the mercs," he warned. "They're everywhere."

"Don't worry. We can handle them," Garrus promised. "And if any of your friends are still alive, we'll do what we can for them."

"Stay here until the paramedics arrive," Shepard told him. "You should be safe. We're going to keep Nassana's guards plenty busy."

The salarian reached out for her and Mordin. They took his hands, clasping them for a moment before letting go. "Thank you. I won't forget this."

Shepard and the professor stood, and the five of them got on the elevator. Shepard's eyes were blazing. "All right. I've decided. If the cops aren't here already, that means she's either completely within her rights to do this or she's bought them out. It's useless handing her over. If Thane gets to Nassana, we're not stopping him."

"Indeed," Samara agreed. "Were I not bound to you, my code would instruct me to kill her as well. These workers must have justice."

"This tower's unfinished," Shepard warned them. "Stay away from ledges and windows, but don't be afraid to use them and any building materials lying around against the enemy." The elevator opened. "Let's move."

The building certainly was unfinished, Garrus thought as they got off the elevator. Panes of glass had been installed here and there, but much of the floor was open. Railings that would provide a picturesque, open floor had yet to be installed, leaving dangerous ledges on several sides—but the railings they would eventually install were piled in heaps around the floor. They would make good cover, and they'd need it—he could already hear the mechanical legs of the FENRIS mechs pumping, drawn to the chime of the elevator like an alarm. Nassana's hired guards wouldn't be far behind.

"Samara, I want you take point with Jacob," Shepard said hastily to their new recruit, signaling at the same time to show Samara what she meant. "Mordin'll back you up; Garrus will take them out at range from the rear. I'm going to—" she gestured at a corridor leading off to an office block to indicate she'd flank and faded out under her tactical cloak.

"Cloaking technology. How do we track her?" Samara asked over the radio, moving forward to take up position.

"I'll have her on infrared at all times," Garrus told her. "And you'll hear her. Eclipse mostly use shotguns, pistols—and those rockets Seryna told us about. Shepard'll use her rifle on the flank, the Locust when she wants to draw attention or needs to thin thick ranks, and you can't miss that sound. Keep an eye on me or follow Taylor. You'll get it."

He'd climbed up on a pile of stone, flat at the top. Prone both for steadier aim and to attract less attention, he waited for the enemy.

He caught one of the FENRIS mechs right off. Mordin opened fire on the other, but Samara and Jacob were already focused on the mercs pressing down the hall. These weren't the Eclipse sisters they'd seen down by the commercial spaceport, asari and human women, but more like Enyala's quasi-military force by the private docks. Men and women, and his visor was picking up a lot of tech and more than one mech to supplement the guns.

He heard a rifle shot in the other room, and Samara's biotics flared. A human engineer was caught up in a nimbus of blue energy. Samara levitated him, screaming and kicking helplessly, right off one of the ledges, while Jacob fired twice at an asari—once to disable her barriers and once to take her down. Garrus found an armored salarian setting up a tech attack behind a pillar. "Mordin. Engineer at two o'clock." Then he fired at a charging human biotic.

It was work until Shepard broke through on the other side of the column, mercs on mercs on mechs. When she did break through behind them, suddenly it was a walk in the park. She took down three before they realized what was happening, and then they couldn't adjust fast enough. The rest of the vanguard was down in less than ten seconds.

Garrus hopped down from the marble blocks and walked with Samara, Jacob, and Mordin through the carnage to join Shepard on the other side. "Well. I think we got their attention," he said.

The night air from the open windows got progressively colder as they climbed Nassana Dantius's unfinished tower. The keen of the wind was a melancholy and eerie sound behind the usual gunfire and battle cries. _Something lonely about a skyscraper at night, no matter how many people there are shooting at you._

Garrus didn't bother making a huge target of himself—the layout of the building, the corridors that crossed into one another and the ledges on every side meant that he could stay out of the mercs' initial sightlines and still take out as many as Samara and Jacob put together from their place in the thick of the action, but around the third time Shepard got around the mercs and started wreaking havoc, some asari with half a brain recognized the tactic, if they didn't catch sight of Shepard. "Hang on!" she cried to her buddies. "Check the human biotic! These are the same bastards that hit Enyala and Wasea's crews by the docks!"

In a second, the asari didn't have a head, but as her corpse stained the concrete violet, the man next to her rolled behind a column, yelling, "We've got Archangel's team here! Do you copy? It's Archangel! Contain the biotics, but watch for the snipers! They're the ones that'll blow your ass to hell!"

An incendiary shot around the corner from Mordin's omni-tool, and the merc's warning died off in a scream. "Thought I was harmless, did you?" the professor called.

Samara vaulted some rebar and shot him. "Find peace in the embrace of the goddess."

Five LOKI mechs rounded the corner then, too far apart for the justicar to attack at once, but one sparked and rounded on the others. "New targeting orders acknowledged," it said.

Garrus, Samara, and Jacob scrapped their new friend with the others. "Shit! They're tearing us apart!" someone yelled. Garrus heard the wet sound of a rifle shot tearing through a throat and a thud as another body hit the floor.

They regrouped around Shepard again, and Samara turned to Garrus. "I feel as though I have come in the middle of something," she observed. "An Eclipse sister attempts to murder you this morning, and now these mercenaries seem more familiar with 'Archangel' than with Commander Shepard. I wish no details, but it is wise to be aware of _all_ of our enemies."

 _She has understatement down to an art form_ , Garrus thought. The accusation in her even tone was so slight he could barely make it out.

"Shepard found me at the end of a bit of a campaign against the major Terminus mercenary groups," Garrus admitted. "It's a long story, but to save on time, I'm not sure how many of them know who _she_ is, but since I got this—"he gestured at his face, "they all know who I am, and they _really_ hate me. It wouldn't have been a problem, but coincidentally, our operations have come into conflict with the major merc groups more than once, and now we're on Illium, it's started to catch up."

"You ran a campaign against the major mercenary groups in the Terminus? Alone?" Samara asked. _Again, the subtlety is astounding. 'Are you a total idiot, just lying, or should I be extremely impressed?' all at once._

 _Probably the idiot, Samara._

Garrus sighed. "Not alone. And things didn't start out that way, but if you don't mind, I'd prefer not to go into the details either."

"All you need to know is that when we walked in here, these guys were shooting at us on their orders, and now they personally want to kill us," Shepard said irritably. "We've lost the element of surprise, and they know at least some of our tactics. You and Mordin will have an advantage; they haven't seen you guys before."

"They know you, it seems, but they fear you as well," Samara noted. "And both fear and anger may lead the enemy to make mistakes."

"Always a gamble: do they hate us in a way that will screw them up or in a way that they'll push through everything and kill us anyway?" Garrus mused. "I hate trying to calculate just how much I've pissed someone off."

"Ah, you're worth it," Taylor told him. "Barely, but you are."

"Thanks. That's always nice to hear."

Shepard gave them the move-out. They went carefully, checking in empty offices and closets for both surviving workers and for ambushes as they went. When they encountered the next merc patrol, though, they were talking. Shepard signaled for quiet.

"Hey, I think he went in here," someone was saying.

"Well, go get him."

"You go!"

"Get your ass in there. Nassana's not paying you to stand around," the officer demanded.

"Fine, but I . . ." the voice faded away, then stopped. Garrus and the others looked at one another as they heard the sound of a silenced gunshot.

"He's here! Come on!" Shepard cried before the mercs could team up on their guy. They ran ahead. There were at least six in the room, and Garrus saw more coming down the hall.

Jacob and Samara went left, throwing a wall of biotic energy in front of them that made Garrus lose focus for a half a second, thinking of other battles where one of the only salarian biotics in the galaxy had done something similar all on his own. The professor instinctively used it like they had back then, too, firing from behind it at the enemy. As one of the Eclipse mercs fell off the floor stories below, Garrus snapped back to the present. Running to a column for cover, he opened fire with the Vindicator to cover the movement—saw one human's shields go down. Mordin took advantage at once.

The enemy was in chaos—some of them trying to chase after Krios, some focused on Garrus, some trying to find Shepard as a Mantis shot from the right flank shattered the skull of an asari whose shields Garrus had just taken out.

"Headshot!" Mordin complimented her, and instinctively dodged as his voice drew more attention to him from the people most worried about the deadly formation of two biotics and a salarian tech bearing down on them. A tendril of biotic energy lashed out, and the man who had fired hurtled down to the lobby below.

"Gravity's one mean mother!" Jacob observed, but he was sweating. He just couldn't keep up with Samara. He signaled her, and fell back with Mordin as she provided the cover fire for their retreat. Once the two of them were safely stationed behind a pillar, he let loose his biotics with a sigh of relief, but Samara was just getting started. Glowing like a star, with no gestures, no clear concentration of biotic energy anywhere the enemy could target to disable her, she walked ahead, firing left and right like a vision of her goddess in her most deadly aspect. The mercs were terrified of her, tripping over themselves to get away—but Garrus's visor tracked Samara's barriers dropping.

She was providing the focal point, taking the brunt of the fire, but it was a diversion to allow the rest of them to take the enemy out quickly. _The thing about_ your _diversion is not to let it divert_ you _._ As Shepard's rifle rang out on the flank again, Garrus found another merc in his crosshairs, fired. Got another, fired. Then Mordin joined the crossfire with his Tempest, the gun he'd taken a liking to on Haestrom, and then they'd cleared the floor.

Garrus strode forward as Samara closed her eyes and let her biotics die away. "Impressive," he said.

"I have had centuries to perfect my technique," Samara said. "Yet I confess it has been some time since I have been in a battle of this scale. Where is Thane Krios?"

She directed her question to Shepard, who'd come back from the other hall. Shepard shook her head. "Gone," she said, frustrated. "Seryna called it. He's using our firefights to get closer to Nassana. We have to keep moving."

"Professor!" Taylor called. He'd been walking the perimeter, making sure they were clear.

Mordin walked over to meet him. Taylor was holding a sniper rifle, Garrus saw. "What do you think?" He asked Mordin.

Garrus looked at the weapon. Light and streamlined. "Let me see that," he said. Taylor handed it over.

Garrus weighed it in his arms, checked the scope, the feel. "Rosenkov Materials. Large magazine—is that semi-automatic fire?"

"New toy, Garrus?" Shepard asked.

He shook his head. "Not for me. To enable the rapid fire and the light weight, they have to have sacrificed some of the power. I prefer to maximize the damage but minimize the number of shots. Makes for cleaner kills. Faster, too. This would be great at stripping biotic barriers, though. Could be an advantage here."

He handed it to Shepard. She lifted it, jostled it in her arms, made a face, and then gave it back to Jacob. "Rosenkov Materials makes quality hardware. Take it. Requisition a couple more. Massani might like it more." She tilted her head. "Thane might like it." She grabbed her pistol then and walked across the hall. "Anyone wondering why this door's locked?" she asked casually, nodding at the sealed room they'd all been ignoring. She brought up her omni-tool, and in a moment she'd hacked the access panel.

The door slid open with a hiss, and five terrified salarians held up their hands. "Please, don't kill us!" one begged. "We'll go! We'll go!"

Another blinked, lowering his hands. "Hey, look! They're not Eclipse! You're here to help us, right?"

Shepard gestured for them to lower their weapons, lowering her own at the same time. "It's one reason I'm here. Come on out. It's safe enough."

The salarian who had spoken before, a thin male in a salmon-colored shirt, pressed his hands together and bowed. "Thank you. We are in your debt." Despite that, none of them moved to leave the room. Two of the salarians were still clutching one another and shuddering in the back. Their eyes kept flicking toward Taylor, Samara—and Garrus's scars. He tipped them an ironic wave. They flinched.

Shepard shot him a glare. "Maybe you can help me," she told the salarians. "I'm looking for someone. Not a merc. He's on his own."

The first salarian that had spoken—scales pitted from age, dressed in dark blue, looked thoughtful. "Well, whoever sealed us in here—"

Pink Shirt, more enthusiastic than his friend, interrupted. "When he found us, I thought we were dead. But he just closed the door and locked us in."

"Not sloppy after all," Garrus observed. "Sounds like our assassin was trying to keep them safe."

"Assassin?" one of the salarians in the back repeated.

"Here for Nassana, I bet," Pink Shirt said, an edge of anger to his voice. "She's got it coming. You treat people like this, it always comes back to bite you in the ass."

"Nassana's not exactly your favorite person?" Shepard guessed.

Blue shirt made a face. "She's a . . . hard woman to work for."

"That's an understatement," scoffed Pink Shirt. "She works us long hours, no overtime, and this is what you get in payment." He gestured violently at his friends, shuddering in storage, at the mercs outside ordered to kill on sight.

"She's unpleasant, to say the least," Blue Shirt concluded.

Shepard folded her arms. "Why not just quit?"

She had a point, Garrus thought. It sounded like people knew Nassana's reputation. Why had her workers stuck around for her to snap?

But the salarians were frowning and muttering. "We would if we could," one said.

"What's stopping you?" Shepard demanded.

"Our contract," he answered. "We're stuck until the job's done. Quitting for any reason can be hazardous to your health."

Pink Shirt shrugged. "We hear that anyone that leaves early tends to disappear. Probably just a rumor."

Garrus snorted. _Maybe not._ Blue Shirt almost smiled at him. "But who wants to find out for sure?"

Shepard straightened. "How many workers were in the tower? Are there many more of you?"

Pink Shirt reached out to grip his friend's arm. "Not alive," he said grimly. "We were lucky."

"Well, some got out before the dogs were sent in," Blue Shirt said. He seemed to be the optimist of the group, Garrus noted. _It's sad how rarely they're right._ "Maybe a few are hiding somewhere."

"If there are more, we will find them and get them to safety," Samara said.

"Fastest way to end this is to get to Nassana," Shepard told her. "What's the quickest way to the penthouse?"

"Cargo elevator is the only way up right now," Pink Shirt told them, gesturing out toward the hall.

"They're still working up top," Blue Shirt added. "Watch your step. Some of the walls aren't in, and it's a long way down."

"Cold, too. I hate working up there," a salarian in the back muttered.

Shepard started to turn, then paused. "Did you see the guy who locked you in? Do you know where he might have gone?" she asked.

Pink Shirt shook his head. "He's no salarian, I can tell you that. But I have no idea where he went. Sorry. If he's after Nassana, he'll be heading to the upper levels."

"I wouldn't stay here too long," Garrus told them. "We've cleared the lower floors. It should be safe. Head down."

Blue Shirt nodded appreciatively. "I was just thinking the same thing." He waved his arm at his coworkers. "Let's go, everybody!"

Garrus and the others stood aside to let the salarians file past, but Pink Shirt stopped in the doorway. He looked hard at Shepard. "Thank you," he said again. "Tell your assassin to aim for her head, 'cause she doesn't have a heart!"

"Get moving!" one of his coworkers called.

The salarians melted away into the shadows of the tower. Shepard stood looking at where they had gone. "And the award for lamest zinger of the night goes to—"she said under her breath.

Garrus chuckled. "Give him a break. He's been through a lot."

Shepard looked across at him. "Grunt could do better. _Massani_ could," as if that settled things.

"Every moment we waste is another Thane Krios gets ahead of us, or another moment Nassana's mercenaries could find more workers," Samara chided them.

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "Not sure about Samara," she noted.

The cargo elevator the salarians had mentioned was just around the corner. In contrast to most of this tower, this room looked finished. The windows had all been put in, the stone floor and chrome elevator doors gleamed. The floor was open. Too open. "We're a little exposed out here," Garrus noted as Shepard approached the call button. "Especially if anyone's in that elevator."

"I was just thinking the same thing myself, Garrus," Shepard said. She punched the button.

"Be on the safe side," Taylor advised. "We need cover."

"Be my guest." Shepard gestured to the decorative bars that had already been installed all around the mezzanine, places people could stop and have drinks over break. As the light on the elevator traveled down to their floor, she took Samara to the right flank, gestured for Garrus to take the left, and Taylor and Mordin to face the elevator directly, and they took up their positions just as the elevator chimed.

"Mezzanine," a VI announced coolly. "Have a pleasant stay."

The elevator opened, revealing the mercs Garrus had expected—three of them.

He hadn't expected one of them to be a krogan. Fire arced out of the elevator from the two supporting engineers on his flank—a salarian and a human female. Garrus ducked as the heat sizzled over the top of his shields, but using his visor to calculate the trajectory, still sent an overload program back to hit on an engineer's shields before they could completely escape the kill box. Taylor and Solus concentrated fire on the krogan, but the salarian engineer was headed right at Garrus, firing off shots from his pistol.

Garrus took two hits on his patched shields and armor before he closed with the little bastard. He saw the salarian's expression shift from determination to surprised panic, then Garrus seized him by the front of his armor, knocked his pistol away with his own gun, tossed him against the wall to take better aim, and fired. Garrus took momentary note of the stain. _They're going to have to bring the decorator back in here._

Then he turned to check the krogan—as Taylor flew back from a concussive blast and fell to the ground and Mordin yanked his leg to pull him back into cover. "Krogan charging!" he yelled.

Garrus took aim and fired three bursts directly at the base of the krogan's neck. His shields were strong enough it scarcely took them down, but like Garrus had hoped, it got the guy's attention. "How much are they paying you for the human?" Garrus called. "How much is it for me?"

The krogan's yellow eyes gleamed, and Garrus knew that he'd guessed right. This guy wasn't Eclipse, he was a bounty hunter—extra muscle this cell had hired to hit Nassana's enemies, or _theirs_. "Archangel," the krogan rumbled, turning around. "Could retire off _your_ bounty, asshole. Time to die."

But behind him, Shepard and Samara had finished their engineer. The krogan yelled as his body was caught up in a full warp field, and behind him, flames licked up the field. His armor melted and so did his head. His body tried to keep him going, but that just kept him conscious. "Should've retired early," Shepard said, strolling around to face him as he looked at her with uncomprehending, agonized eyes. She fired eight bullets from her Locust into the fused remnants of his face, and he fell down.

She looked at Garrus. "You saw we were good across the room?" she challenged him.

"Like it was going to take you and Samara more than fifteen seconds to deal with one engineer at close quarters? I saw."

Shepard still glared at him. "You just _had_ to declare war on half the Terminus," she muttered.

"I saved the other half for you."

Shepard shoved him on her way to the elevator. Garrus grinned and followed her, falling in step beside Taylor and Solus. Taylor had a strange look on his face. Garrus glanced at him. "Something on your mind?"

Taylor held up his hands. "Nothing. Nothing."

The five of them stepped into the elevator. Shepard pressed the button on the console marked "Bridge Level," the doors shut, and the elevator began moving swiftly upward.

When the doors opened, Shepard motioned for silence again. A merc was talking into a radio, oblivious to their arrival. Shepard signaled for them to surround him, weapons out. _Careful_ , she warned.

He was standing around the corner at a vista window, looking down at the pavement, stories below. Human. Armored. Looked like an officer.

"I haven't heard from teams four or five," the merc said to his team. "Don't worry. My team's always ready to go." He listened for a moment. "I don't know where he is. Not yet. Don't worry about it." He waited, then annoyed, said, "We don't need any reinforcements. I'll take care of it. It's under control. I'll go down there myself."

Shepard waited for him to sign off, waited for him to clip the radio to his belt. They didn't want those reinforcements if they could help it. "Turn around very slowly," she said.

"Damn it," the mercenary swore, raising his hands. He turned around to look straight down the barrels of three pistols, an assault rifle, and a shotgun.

"Tell me where the assassin was last spotted and I might let you live," Shepard told him.

The merc crossed his arms. He was a professional, you could tell that much. Amateurs couldn't stare down the barrel of a gun with as much annoyance as this guy was. "If I knew that, I wouldn't be wasting my time talking to you. What are you idiots doing here, anyway? We're not working drugs or sabotage here. We've got a legitimate protection contract!"

You had to admire the guy, Garrus thought, asking questions in his situation. Shepard just jerked her head at the window. "You've got two ways down: express or coach. Your choice."

"Look, lady, even if I knew where he was, I wouldn't tell you. You've been killing our guys all over Nos Astra!" the merc snapped.

Shepard lowered her gun. "Not the answer I was looking for," she said. She pressed her forearm across the mercenary's chest, pushing him back into the picture window behind him. Garrus heard it creak.

"I've got nothing more to say to you," the mercenary said, though Garrus noted he was speaking faster now. "If you shoot me, my team's right through there. They'll be all over you."

"We've come this far," Shepard told him. "You think they'll stop us?" She pushed down a little harder, and behind the mercenary's shoulder guard, small fractures appeared in the glass. "Is a little information really worth dying over? Is Nassana?"

The mercenary paled, gulped. "Okay, look," he said. "Last I heard, the assassin was down on the mezzanine, but the teams on the bridge think they might've spotted him. Nobody knows for sure."

Garrus saw Shepard thinking. It wasn't any more than they'd known already. This guy was useless—but they didn't have to kill him. She lowered her arm and stepped back, wiping her gloved hand on her leg armor. "Get out of here," she told him.

The merc raised his hands again. "I'm going." Samara and Taylor followed him with their weapons until he got onto the elevator and they saw the floor count going down.

"He owes you one," Garrus said. "Anybody else would've killed him."

Shepard's gaze wandered over the hard faces of the others—Taylor, Solus, Samara, none of them sure she'd done the right thing letting this one guy live to kill for somebody else some other day. Finally, she looked back at Garrus. Her shoulders drooped, and her face was bleak. "I'm tired, Garrus," she said simply. In those three words, Garrus heard it all. Her irritation at how Archangel still dogged them, the disgust at all the innocents that had died here tonight, the powerful, crazy CEO who had given the order and the mercs that had carried it out, the toll killing always took on her, her need to save someone else—even someone that didn't deserve it, her hope that the merc would make her right and her despair that he wouldn't.

He wondered when Shepard had last taken a shore leave.

Without planning it, he brought his hand up to clasp her shoulder. She held his gaze for about two seconds, let him comfort her just that long before breaking away. "Let's find Thane and get the hell out of this place."

* * *

 **A/N: I think Garrus probably editorialized what happened at the café when he told Shepard about it. Also think doing that might come back to bite him. In a court of law, he couldn't pass off what happened as self-defense. He's trying to transition back into Garrus Vakarian, but Archangel isn't quite dead yet, among the mercs of the Terminus or in him.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMS**


	18. Auld Lang Syne: Good Will Draught

XVIII

Auld Lang Syne: Good Will Draught

The mercs the Eclipse officer had been in charge of were in the next room. It was big and open with a ceiling like a cathedral—when it was finished it would probably be some kind of trading floor. Maybe an in-house café. There were just three of them and a couple of deactivated LOKIs—a patrol group or guard, not a hunting party, and they were talking over a radio.

"He's all over the place," a human man complained. Shepard held up her hand. _Hope these guys know more than the last one._

"What do you mean?" an angry woman's voice demanded over a speaker. Garrus recognized a Citadel accent. _Nassana._

"We've got reports of him on multiple levels. We think he's traveling through the ducts," the merc explained. "And the assassin's not even your only problem. Archangel's all over us out here."

"Archangel's your problem, not mine," Nassana snapped. "Deal with him, and find that assassin! What the hell am I paying you for?" The radio beeped. She'd signed off.

"Shit." The merc said. "If Archangel doesn't get us, she'll throw us to the dogs. Come on."

"You almost got to feel sorry for them," Taylor said in an undertone.

Shepard's face was tight. These guys weren't alone, and they were wound up to shoot on sight. "No. You really don't." she said. She nodded, and they charged in.

She hacked one of the LOKIs as they charged. Bullets blazing, the fight probably lasted five seconds. The mercs were as tired as they were—but they were unprepared. Garrus looked over the smears on the floor impassively, then nodded at a door to an office on the left, glowing red—locked.

"More survivors?" Taylor guessed.

"Could be." Shepard sliced the door open with her omni-tool.

It occurred to Garrus then that whoever was in the room would have no idea of knowing who had been firing at whom outside. "Shepard—"Garrus started, but it was too late. She'd walked in the room.

"You guys all right in here?"

Garrus saw Shepard freeze, and before he walked in beside her, he knew what he'd see. One of these workers had a gun. His eyes were wide, manic, and he swung the pistol around wildly, trying to cover them all. "Get back!" he shouted. "Get back! I'll shoot!"

Garrus looked at Samara, saw biotic energy glowing around her fists already. She could grab the gun from the salarian or push him off to the side—but his finger was tight on the trigger, and it was close quarters in here at point blank range. If he managed to get a shot off, there was no telling what he'd hit.

"Relax," Garrus told the salarian, keeping his voice concerned and nonthreatening, even as he didn't lower his pistol for a second. The salarian was scared out of his wits. Probably not actually hostile, but nervous enough he could fire off a shot in a heartbeat. "Don't do anything you'll regret."

"I don't want to hurt you, but I will," the salarian told him. There was another behind him, unarmed, horrified as he watched the scene. "I said, 'get back!'" the armed salarian cried, shaking the gun. "I'll do it!" His forearms shook, unused to holding a gun. "Please, don't make me do it," he begged.

Slowly, deliberately, Shepard holstered her pistol and raised her hands again. "Hey, I'm not the bad guy here," she said in the human version of the same tone Garrus had just used. "What's your name?"

Forming a connection with the hostile, becoming his friend. The salarian started to relax, and his pistol dropped a few centimeters. "I . . . I'm Telon," he said. Shepard lowered her hands, and Telon raised the pistol again. "Don't . . . don't come any closer," he said, but his voice was already calming. The salarian behind him started to walk up.

"Telon, I'm Commander Shepard," Shepard said. "I don't work with the mercs, and I don't want to hurt you. I'm here to help." She raised an eyebrow, and when he didn't challenge her again, stepped forward, holding out her hand for his pistol.

"I . . . all right," Telon said. He handed the gun to her, trembling. "Here. I . . . don't feel so—" His eyes rolled back into his head, and he passed out. The other salarian rushed forward.

"Telon!" All their weapons were on him in a second. "He's my brother!" the other salarian explained. "I just want to see if he's all right!" Shepard nodded at all of them, and all of them but Taylor holstered their guns. Taylor stood in the doorway, watching their back.

The other salarian knelt by Telon, taking his pulse. "I'm Chesith," he said. "Are you the ones who . . . shot the merc?" His eyes darted to a corpse in the corner.

The dead man was human. His blood and brains had spattered all over the corner of the empty office. His head was completely gone. Shepard looked him over. "I've shot a lot of mercs today, but I can't take credit for him," she said.

Chesith had his brother's head in his lap. He kneaded his brother's shoulders and upper arms, trying to bring him around again, but he kept his eyes on Shepard. "Then who did?"

"You tell me. What happened?" Shepard asked him.

Chesith gestured at the merc. "The merc found us and shouted at us to move. We panicked. And then he shouted more. I thought he was going to kill us, then his head just exploded! Telon picked up the merc's gun, but we were too afraid to leave. After about two minutes, we heard shooting outside—then you showed up."

"A perfect headshot with no collateral damage," Garrus mused, looking outside at the floor. Where would the drell have been? He could've been in the vents—but the airway was sixty meters away, and the grate was undisturbed. There wouldn't have been much room for Krios to shoot. How had he even seen the salarians in trouble? "Very impressive."

Shepard folded her arms, and her lips curved upward. "Mmm. I know a couple of people that could pull it off." In the field in front of the others, the indirect, self-inclusive compliment was still tantamount to a glowing commendation from Shepard. He knew his abilities, and he still had to fight to keep from grinning like an idiot. That calculated encouragement just when one of the men was feeling worst had been something he'd learned from her. He wondered where she'd learned it. _Was it Anderson, someone else, or did she just always know?_

Shepard raised her chin at Chesith. "I'm looking for someone. Probably the guy who killed this merc."

Chesith frowned. "Telon thought he saw someone following us, but he's been a bit . . . on edge. I haven't seen anyone but the mercs."

 _We aren't going to catch this guy until he gets Nassana_.

Shepard sighed, resigned. "How safe is that bridge out there?"

Chesith had turned his attention to Telon again. His brother was stirring, coming around from his panic, but Chesith answered anyway. "The bridge is stable, but the wind's your real problem. If it doesn't throw you off, the mercs will definitely try. There's a lot of them out there."

"And the bridge is the only way to the penthouse in the other tower?" Garrus asked.

"From here, yeah," Chesith said, helping Telon to sit. "It won't be easy. Mercs are patrolling the other side. Whatever Nassana's hiding from must be pretty scary."

"There are still mercenaries up here," Samara said. "The two of you should get to the lower levels."

"No need to convince me," Chesith said. "Telon, come on. Get up."

He helped his brother to stand. Telon rubbed his head. "Can we go home now?" he asked. He sounded very young. Garrus wondered if he was even a decade old.

"Yeah," Chesith told him. "We're getting out of here." With his arm around his brother's back, he started out of the room. He nodded at Shepard on the way. "Thank you."

They followed the salarians out, but took a left where the brothers took a right. On the other side of the room there was a staircase, with a sign cycling through asari, salarian, and human standard languages that read "Bridge." Underneath the sign, a temporary terminal had been set up, and Nassana's voice was shouting from the intercom. "Where is everyone? Will someone please give me a report?"

Shepard stepped up to the console and hit the button for the microphone. Looking at her, Garrus saw the reflection of what he felt when he thought of what had happened to the workers in this building. Her face was as still, but looking into her eyes was like looking into the heart of a hurricane. In the end, Eclipse didn't matter here. This cell was almost legitimate—they weren't criminals, not here. They were hired security professionals that had gunned down "trespassers" five minutes after hours on the cowardly orders of someone who could pay the cops the blood money to shut this up. Eclipse's feud with Archangel was irrelevant. What mattered was the gall, the intolerable arrogance of the woman who thought she could buy people's lives. Maybe she wasn't trafficking them like her sister, but Nassana Dantius was still treating people like chattel.

 _Someone has to do something._ He knew it. Shepard knew it. Right here, right now, Shepard knew the galaxy would be a better place without Nassana Dantius. And Garrus wondered how long it would have taken her on Omega to come around to Archangel.

 _But that doesn't matter either._

"It's about time!" Nassana was yelling. "What's going on down there?"

"Sorry, Nassana," Shepard said, smooth as glass. Garrus made a note to jump off the nearest tower if he ever heard Shepard speaking to him in that tone. "I'm afraid the mercs you had shooting your workers aren't able to respond."

"Damn it!" Nassana swore. The comm went dead.

The bridge was where Nassana had concentrated her defense. At the top of the stairs, there was a makeshift armory—a workbench, a crate of thermal clips, empty gun lockers. "If anyone needs some clips, now's the time," Garrus said. He looked up at Samara, standing behind a column and peering out across the bridge. "How many?"

"Twenty at least—this is Nassana's final line of defense," Samara reported. "But I do not think the mercenaries will be as much of a problem as the turrets she has stationed above the bridge."

Shepard grimaced. "Artillery and rockets. Can't say Seryna didn't warn us." She pulled her rocket launcher around to cradle it in her arms. "Garrus?"

"I've got you," he assured her.

"Stay toward the center of the bridge if you can—remember what those salarians said about the wind!" Shepard warned. "Move out!"

Everyone on Shepard's team now was a top-notch operative. You could say what you wanted about Cerberus, they know how to vet a could put a dozen different squads together with what they'd given her, and no matter what they were up against, it wouldn't be anything close to a fair fight. They would hit the enemy with overwhelming force and overrun any opposition, annihilating them with tech, biotics, and break-the-bank firepower in the hands of people who knew how to use it.

Taylor, Samara, and Mordin fought like they'd been a unit for months, focusing on the heaviest-armored biotics and vanguards, throwing them into chaos, putting them on the defense, forcing them off the bridge. Mordin weakened armor with tech attacks to open it up for biotics, or Taylor and Samara spun a target overhead for his heavy pistol.

Garrus's job was the long-range mercs, the heavies. The mercs with rifles and rocket-launchers that could shoot them down across the bridge—and until the turrets went down, anyone firing on Shepard. She took out a couple of LOKIs, found a good position behind some of the cover the mercs had set up on the bridge, battened down against the wind that howled over the bridge, pulled shots out of line, and bit through the seals of Garrus's armor, crouched, and took aim at the two turrets spitting fire on the far side of the bridge.

In six seconds, though, both were down, and Shepard joined him shooting all the mercs Taylor, Samara, and Mordin hadn't gotten to yet. In the place in his mind that was floating above the rhythm of sighting the target, firing, ejecting and reloading heat sinks, and pressing forward, Garrus noted Shepard was in top form.

She'd always been the deadliest person on the field anyway, but the woman that had made nonlethal shots to the center of mass back on Korlus was now coolly making as many headshots as he was on this bridge, fluidly connecting them with hacks and attacks on the LOKI mechs the Eclipse soldiers kept sending at them. "Impressive!" Garrus remarked as a salarian's brains burst out of the back of his head after a particularly well-placed shot.

"You've inspired me," Shepard said shortly, and so drily he couldn't tell if she was saying it straight or as a joke. _Maybe figure that out later_ , Garrus thought, darting to the side as a rocket exploded a meter away. The shockwave took his shields down 30 percent, but he'd already got a lock on the merc's position and sent back an overload program. Shepard quirked her wrist, and a merc reloading a rocket launcher tripped back screaming as her light armor was engulfed in flames. Mordin's heavy pistol punched a hole the size of a fist through her chest, and the screaming stopped.

Over the howl of the wind, they could hear Nassana yelling out of speakers mounted on the other side of the bridge. "I don't care what you do! No one gets across that bridge! Just kill them!"

Another merc went tumbling off the bridge, wreathed in biotics, and they pressed forward. They were closer to Nassana than the way back now. Four mercs remained—a couple of engineers, a grunt, and a tough-looking, tattooed asari trying to rally them all. "Hold them back, you miserable shits!" she cried.

As Samara, Taylor, and Mordin advanced, one of the engineers, a salarian with mad eyes and tears flowing down his face, just sprang forward at Samara, screaming, omni-blade extended. Face impassive, she took him down with a three-pulse blast from her assault rifle. He fell to the ground, blood pumping from the wounds in his chest. Garrus smelled it on the breeze from where he stood, across the width of the bridge from Shepard from behind cover they'd taken from the mercs.

A stream of bullets flew from where the two reporting soldiers were trying to cover their captain, holding Garrus and Shepard behind their pillars. Garrus tracked the shots on his visor, already constructing a firing solution, and when one of the bullet counts hit forty, he leaned out and squeezed the trigger. Mordin and Shepard were hitting the asari captain, wearing down her armor with tech as she cursed them in language as blue as she was.

The last merc tried to make a break for it, running for the door to Nassana's office, firing over his shoulder. Taylor's short-range shot hit him in the middle of the back, punching fractured bone and blood out of the front of his chest. The asari howled in wordless rage—she knew she was dead in seconds. Limbs trembling in exertion, her biotics flared into a halo half a meter deep all around her. Garrus tracked her intention a second before she moved, vaulting over the last barricade, rocketing past Samara, Taylor, and Mordin on a trajectory that would take her straight into Garrus, a living missile, and shoot them both of the edge of the bridge.

He dived to the left, and she fell off the bridge alone. Garrus watched her fall, trailing biotic energy, and impact where several others had done tonight, stories below.

They stood silent for a moment, and then Garrus felt the eyes of all the others gravitate toward him.

"'Fighting Archangel's war,'" Shepard recalled, grim and disgusted. "God. I wasn't. I hope you weren't. But they were." She walked past Garrus, ahead toward Nassana's office.

They all watched her go for a moment, then followed. Nassana's office was right off the bridge, off a small hallway. Entering, Garrus saw three bodyguards were still standing behind her desk in front of the window at her back, two humans and an asari, blocking a sniper shot from a neighboring building. There was an abstract painting on the left wall of the office. Large. It looked expensive. Otherwise, the walls were white, minimalist.

Nassana was pacing in front of her guards, dressed in a long, dark-blue-and-maroon asari gown. Her eyes were shadowed and her face was pale, and he saw chips in her manicure where she'd bitten her nails. He felt little sympathy.

She rounded on them as they filed into the room, still more angry than scared. "What the hell does Archangel—"she checked when she saw him. Her mouth fell open slightly. Then she saw Shepard, and she took a physical step back. "Shepard . . . but you're dead."

Shepard, with the guns of all three of Nassana's bodyguards trained on her, crossed the room and sat down in one of the plush white guest chairs in front of Nassana's desk. She held her pistol loosely in one hand, but she would be able to bring it up in a second. Garrus signaled the others, and they fanned out, making it impossible for the bodyguards—or Nassana, if she decided to get her hands dirty—to take them out in one move. All of them were ready to fire.

Shepard crossed her legs. "I got better," she said, sounding almost bored.

Nassana looked resigned. "And now you're here to kill me."

Shepard shrugged. "Won't deny it's crossed my mind since I got here, but it's not why I came."

"Don't play with me, Shepard," Nassana scowled.

Shepard gave her a big, bright, completely fake smile. "Charming as ever."

Nassana paced behind her desk. "I'm sure you find this all very ironic. First you take care of my sister, and now you're here for me. Well, you made it this far. Now what?"

Shepard sat back in her chair. "Nassana, I'm not here to kill you. I just happen to have a meeting in your office."

Nassana was violet with rage. "So you destroyed my tower, decimated my security—for what?" she sputtered.

"We told you: Archangel's hit Eclipse all over the Terminus systems," one of the bodyguards snapped, glaring at Garrus. His finger was tight on the trigger of his weapon.

"That's not Archangel, you fool!" Nassana raged. "I've seen him before. That's a drop-out C-Sec colleague of _hers_ ," she waved her hand dismissively.

"Don't tell me that's not Archangel!" the merc cried. "He's got the fucking symbol on his arm! Tarak shot his face off on Omega, and _she_ helped _him_ escape. Do you know how many of my friends you've killed, you bastard?"

"How many innocents did your friends kill tonight?" Garrus replied.

"Don't pull that noble act with me," Nassana snorted. "What's this really about?"

For a second, Shepard's feigned unconcern dropped, and all the anger and weariness Garrus had seen below showed on her face. "No, he's right. It's about your workers. But I'm also looking for someone."

Nassana flung her arms out. "You expect me to believe that? Is it credits? Is that what you want? Just tell me your price. We can make this problem go away."

There was a thud in the ceiling—the sound of a misplaced knee or elbow hitting the side of the vent. Shepard's smile was cold. "All the credits in the world won't make this problem go away, Nassana."

Nassana waved her hand and turned her back, disgusted at what she thought was happening, how she thought Shepard was making her squirm. "Who the hell gave you the right to play God? I may not be perfect, but look at you! We both kill people for money. What's the difference?"

Shepard's smile vanished. "I have a slightly different opinion of my job description," she said "I try to save people, when I can. I only kill when people leave me no choice. You—you kill people because you think they're beneath you. You squash them like bugs if they so much as step in your path."

"Well, you've got a choice here, Shepard," Nassana said. "I can tell you—" her guards shifted, turning toward the ceiling. "What?" she asked.

"I heard something," the asari said.

Nassana pounded her fist on the desk. "Damn it! Check the other entrances." She pointed her finger at Shepard. "You—stay put." Then, from the vent conveniently right behind Nassana's desk, a drell dropped down behind one of the humans.

In less than a second it was over. The first human died of a broken neck, spine neatly severed. The second had his windpipe crushed from a swift, hard punch to the throat. The asari gasped, but by then Krios had drawn a pistol and shot her in the throat.

The kills had been so swift, so silent, that the shot was the first sound to get Nassana's attention. She'd been facing Shepard, focused on what her paranoia still believed to be the threat, when the gunshot made her whirl around, biotics flaring. Too late. "Who are—"

Krios ducked under her outstretched arm, gripping her shoulder with his left hand. With his right, he brought the barrel of his heavy pistol right to her gut, and fired before Nasanna could finish her sentence. She gasped, and her head fell back. Krios caught her up in his arms into something almost like an embrace, and bore her over to her desk. Gently, he laid her atop it, crossing her arms across her chest, and straightened somewhat—but not entirely.

Thane Krios was about the height and weight of a human male—not too tall, but so perfectly conditioned Garrus would have known he was deadly even if he hadn't just seen him kill three people in less than a second. His scales were a bright, venomous green that contrasted against the black of his crest and the bright red of the frill over his jaw and neck. His black suit straddled the line between sophisticated and ostentatious, formfitting with a shirt cut lower than Samara's breastplate, but all in a black that would easily blend into a crowd or fade into the shadows.

"Impressive," Garrus ventured. "You certainly know how to make an entrance."

Krios didn't respond, still bowed over Nassana's corpse, eyes closed, hands clasped. His lips moved, but Garrus couldn't hear his voice. Two seconds stretched into five, and just before things got really awkward, Shepard said, "I was hoping to talk to you."

Krios's double eyelids flitted open, and his hands fell to his sides. "I apologize, but prayers for the wicked must not be forsaken." His voice was quiet and cultured, but he spoke with a rasp so dry it scraped the air. Taylor actually winced, and beside him, Garrus saw the professor's eyes narrow. His omni-tool came up quietly, and his fingers started working.

Shepard stayed focused on their contact. "For her?"

"No. For me." Krios stalked around the desk. His large, black eyes flickered over the rest of them, then lit on Shepard again, serious and intent. "The measure of an individual can be difficult to discern by actions alone," he mused. "Take you, for instance. All this destruction, chaos. I was curious to see how far you'd go to find me. Well, here I am."

Shepard bristled. "Once I walked in the door, it wasn't about you. The destruction and chaos started long before I got here, when she ordered her men to fire on the workers trying to find _you_. I wanted to save everyone I could." Krios didn't deny it. His vertical inner eyelids slid across his eyes and back again, and he inclined his head respectfully. Shepard gestured at him. "How'd you know I was coming?"

"I didn't," Krios told her. "Not until you marched in the front door and started shooting. Nassana had become paranoid. You saw the strength of her guard force. She believed one of her sisters would kill her. You were a valuable distraction."

Shepard folded her arms. "So you used me to make your hit."

He was making a worse impression than anybody since Jack, but Krios didn't flinch at Shepard's accusing tone. "I needed a diversion," he said. "You needed to speak with me. You certainly fulfilled your end of the bargain. What would you like to discuss?"

Shepard's lip curled in distaste, and Garrus half thought she would walk away, but then she swallowed. "You're familiar with the Collectors?"

"By reputation."

Shepard nodded. "They're abducting entire human colonies. Freedom's Progress was their handiwork. And Horizon."

Krios blinked again. "I see."

"We're going after them," Shepard told him.

"Attacking the Collectors would require passing through the Omega-4 relay," Krios pointed out. "No ship has ever returned from doing so."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "They told me it was impossible to get to Ilos, too."

The ghost of a smile flitted over his lips. "A fair point," he said. "You built a career on performing the impossible." Somehow it didn't surprise Garrus that the assassin, unlike Samara, knew exactly who they were on sight. Krios crossed the floor, moving with feline economy and power. He gazed at the door, considering. "This was to be my last job," he told them. "I'm dying. Low survival odds don't concern me. The abduction of your colonists does."

Garrus glanced at Mordin. The professor met his eyes. He gave him a short, sharp nod, still running scans on his omni-tool.

"You're dying?" Shepard asked. Her tone had changed completely. "Are you contagious? How long do you have?"

Krios looked back over his shoulder at her. "If you're interested, we can discuss it on your ship. The problem isn't contagious, and it won't affect my work," he assured them.

She had almost made up her mind she hated this guy, Garrus could tell, but this changed everything. This terminally ill drell was willing to give up everything and die to save a bunch of human colonists. What was it he'd said? _The measure of an individual can be difficult to discern?_

Shepard shifted, looking uncomfortable. "I hadn't heard about your illness. Is there anything we can do? We have a couple of good doctors aboard my ship." She gestured at Mordin, but the salarian frowned.

"Kepral's Syndrome," he said. "Too advanced. Can hear it in lungs, voice, breath. No cure. No time to develop one. Effecting circulation yet?"

"At times," Thane conceded. "I have learned to work around it. Do not worry. Giving me this opportunity is enough. The universe is a dark place. I'm trying to make it brighter before I die." He looked out the window. "The violence started before you arrived," he admitted. "Many innocents died today. I wasn't fast enough, and they suffered. I must atone for that. I will work for you, Shepard. No charge."

* * *

For some reason, the cab station was reluctant to send a van or rent a skycar to six people covered in green, red, and violet bloodstains. Shepard was able to convince the security guard not to call the cops by having her verify her Spectre status. Technically the Spectres were Council operatives, and they were outside of Council jurisdiction in the Terminus, but the sec officer was so awed or intimidated to meet Shepard she forgot that little detail. Or she'd never known. Anyway, she let them go, and they ended up riding the train back to the trading floor plaza.

There weren't a whole lot of things more awkward than sitting in an Illium train car, in combat armor, covered in blood, while civilians gave you side-eye, Garrus thought, but sitting beside a drell who'd dropped the news of his terminal illness like a weather announcement didn't really improve the awkwardness. Mordin asked questions regarding Krios's breathing, sleeping patterns, mobility, and blood type for six stops—which Krios patiently answered, albeit with a growing edge of annoyance to his dry voice—before Shepard finally asked Krios if he would give Mordin a blood sample when they returned to the _Normandy_ and told the professor to shut up. She couldn't look at Krios, and Taylor couldn't stop, shifting in his seat every few seconds. The only one who seemed comfortable with the situation was Samara, who tucked her feet up underneath her on the worn public seat and started to meditate.

Unable to begin the briefing on a public train car, they rode the rest of the way back to the _Normandy_ in silence.

Thane was the last official business they had on Illium, but there was still a lot to do. Finalization on Tali's shielding upgrades, engine checks and maintenance, shuttle maintenance, reprovisitioning before they flew out again. Shepard had already made plans to head to Tuchanka next—something about working out what was wrong with Grunt with the krogan clans. There wasn't a lot of medical information about krogan available on the extranet. Ever since the Rebellions, krogan had become understandably careful about letting other species know about their biology. In order to figure out what he called a "blood haze" in his head was all about, they were going to have to ask an expert. But for all Garrus knew, Tuchanka was in the opposite direction from wherever it was he needed to go.

As the days ticked down before they left Illium, Garrus got more and more anxious to hear back from Liara. He had to know where to look for Sidonis before it was too late. Before they flew through the Omega-4 relay and he lost any chance to get justice for the ten men that had died on Omega. No one else knew. No one else cared. He was the only one left.

He'd stopped sleeping again, and by now, he was more familiar with the Thanix than most turian engineers. He'd gotten a couple letters back from his military contacts thanking him for his observations on the gun, actually. Running calibration sequences didn't help anymore. He'd have worked the tension out in the shuttle bay like Shepard had done after Horizon, but he knew he'd run into the same problem she had. The observation window along the engineering corridor would let anyone passing through engineering know right away that something was wrong, and the last thing he wanted to do was talk about it.

While contract mechanics refitted and upgraded the Kodiak, Garrus had asked Shepard if he could take a look at the Hammerhead they'd picked up a while back. It was a hybrid military ground vehicle Cerberus had developed, more agile than the Mako if not as well armored, and equipped with jets for long jumps and driving over water. He was curious how it worked—even Shepard had been unable to figure out a way to crash it—and anyone who saw him fiddling with the Hammerhead engine wasn't likely to start worrying about him. Taking care of the Mako on the _SR-1_ had been his primary shipside responsibility.

Shepard had agreed to let him poke around so long as he had Tali check things over before they took it out again, but the second Niels saw him down there the day before they left Illium, he whistled. "Vakarian, you have got to get yourself a life."

Garrus pushed the trolley he was lying on out from under the Hammerhead and sat up, wiping engine fluid from his forehead and reminding himself to visit the doc for a clean bandage later. "Doesn't look like I'm down here alone."

"Sure, but this is the first time I've been down here all week. Gotta check the engine, fuel levels after the contractors were here earlier. Make sure the Kodiak's ready for whatever the commander needs her to do tomorrow. We're on shore leave, Vakarian. Who knows if we'll get another one! Have to make the most of it while we can! You work harder than anyone on this boat but the commander. Take a break!"

Garrus forced a smile. "They don't like my face here on Illium. Can't say I blame them. I guess Nos Astra isn't really for me." He hadn't exactly been grounded after Dantius Towers, but Shepard had strongly suggested he avoid any lonely strolls through the dark corners of the city, and Garrus hadn't really been inclined to go looking for trouble on his own.

Niels squatted down to his level. "Look, a bunch of us are going out tonight. We'll get some drinks, maybe dance. Nothing too crazy, just good fun. You should come. Clear your head." He smiled. "Or fog it up."

Garrus wiped his hands, considering. _It's better than staying here worrying._ "Alright if I invite Tali?" he said. "I promised we'd do something before the _Normandy_ took off. First I was busy, then she was, and we never got around to it."

Niels shrugged. "Sure, the more the merrier, right? Tali'Zorah could probably use some fun, too, after what happened down on Haestrom. And this is Illium. Anywhere we go will probably have drinks for quarians, right?" He frowned, suddenly worried.

"We'll check the reviews beforehand," Garrus promised. "Tali knows the best extranet sites to look for. When we leaving?"

"We'll probably head around 2000 hours," Niels told him. He looked down at Garrus's grease-spotted bodysuit. "Uh—you'll change before we go, right?"

Garrus held out his hand for Niels to help him up. "Sure. I'll be ready to go."

* * *

Turned out the best place for quarian drinks close to the ship was Eternity, the lounge Garrus had visited with Shepard, Lawson, and Taylor their first day on Illium. Tali was jumping in excitement as they headed over. "I feel like we never do anything normal," she told Garrus as they walked under the market lights. "It will be nice to go out without having to shoot anyone for once."

"That we know of, anyway," Garrus qualified. "You never know what a quiet night out might turn into." He eyed his side pistol, hoping Eternity wasn't the mercenary bar.

Tali shoved him. "I could swear you want this to turn into a blood bath. Relax! It'll be fine!"

The lights were dim and pulsing at this hour, and there were far more people moving through the rooms of the lounge now than when Garrus had visited earlier in the day. The music throbbed over the speakers. A few people were already swaying and writhing on the dance floor. Garrus and Tali found Niels in a back corner. He'd secured a bench and a couple of tables, and when Garrus saw the crowd he'd brought with him, he did relax.

Taylor, Goto, and Joker were there, along with Gabriella Daniels and Ken Donnelly, Thomas Hawthorne, Sarah Patel, and Vadir Rolston. They were in fact the very Cerberus crew members Garrus appreciated most on the _SR-2_ , every one of them hardworking and friendly but not overbearing.

Tali's entire posture softened when she saw Joker, Daniels, and Donnelly. She already worked with Ken and Gabby in engineering, and liked them both for more than their talent. She'd told Garrus in private that Donnelly was a little inappropriate but entirely harmless, and both engineers were the very best-natured sort of human. She hadn't met all of the others, and Garrus and Niels introduced her.

The two of them settled on the edge of the table. Niels flagged down a waitress. Garrus ordered a glass of _creyis_ , straight. They had Cipritine Bronze Label, and when it came, Garrus eyed the peridot-colored liquid appreciatively. It'd been a long time since he'd had a good drink. Anyone that sold the good stuff on Omega was likely to sell it at 300 percent markup. To compete here, the bars had to offer good prices.

Tali's straw came in an airtight, sterile package, and so did her drink. It'd been premixed this morning in a clean room downtown, the waitress told them, and chilled in their fridge all day long. She sighed happily as she sipped. "This is more like it," she said. "It's almost like going to the bartender back home on the Fleet. Thank you for inviting us out," she added to Niels. "I wouldn't have thought you would have wanted aliens in your group."

"What? Because of Cerberus?" Sarah Patel asked, surprised. "I only joined five months ago because the recruiter said Cerberus was getting ready to do something about the Collectors. I've got family out here in the Terminus. Anyone willing to help us take out those monsters is okay in my book."

There were murmurs all around the table. "Did you all sign on for this mission?" Tali asked.

"I've been in Cerberus a while," Taylor admitted. "A few years. But this is the best crew and the best commander I've served under."

"Here's to that," Rolston grinned, raising his bottle. "To Commander Shepard!"

"To the crew that'll help her take those Collector bastards out!" Donnelly added. Everyone drank.

Garrus regarded Donnelly. "Your accent comes across the translator," he remarked. "It's still Alliance Standard—English, the same as Lawson and Shepard and several of you speak—but like you learned it on a different part of Earth. Where are you from, Donnelly?"

"Ach, that'd be Scotland. Don't hold the English against us, laddie. One good, fighting Scot's worth twelve of yer Brits, Aussies, and Americans."

"I'd like to see you up against Lawson or Shepard, Kenneth," Daniels snorted.

"Here now, lass, I dinnae say _I_ was a good Scot, now did I?" Donnelly laughed.

"You Earthborn are all spoiled if you ask me," Niels grinned. "Haven't had to really build anything for years. Always someone around to help when things get dicey. The colonies are where it's at."

There were good-natured boos from Goto, Donnelly, and Hawthorne, cheers from the others. The booze flowed, and Garrus and Tali got to know some of the crew of the Normandy _SR-2_. Niels and Rolston showed off holos of their families out in the colonies. Niels had a three-year-old son, and Rolston had two girls, eight and five. Patel talked about her fiancé, an agricultural technician back on Benning. If all went well, they were planning to get married next year.

After a couple drinks, Tali was swaying slightly to the music in her seat. She looked over at the dance floor wistfully, then asked, "Do you want to dance, Garrus?"

Garrus considered. Kasumi was swapping jokes and engineering tips with Gabby and Ken, while Taylor, Hawthorne, Patel, and Rolston were comparing service histories. He and Tali had been arguing ship design with Niels and Joker, but the two pilots looked more than capable of keeping up the conversation without them. "Why not?" he asked, standing up with her to head to the dance floor.

Tali looked up at him, her eyes half-lidded in a way that suggested a smile. Garrus let the slight buzz in his body take over, laced her fingers with his, and spun her around.

It was good to do something normal for a change. No shooting, no moral debates raging in his head, just good drinks, good people, and a pulsing beat. Garrus went with it. No one would ever call him the galaxy's best dancer, but he knew how to move without embarrassing himself, anyway, which was more than some could say. And Tali more than made up for any of his awkwardness. Her hips swirled and swayed while her arms waved in time. Every gesture flowed like water. Garrus smiled and let her drag him along, remembering for the first time in a while what nonlethal _fun_ felt like.

 _Probably a bad sign I ever forgot._

He was enjoying himself so much, he didn't notice at first that Tali had moved closer to him, that his breath was fogging up her visor, his hands were on those twitching hips, and she was turning in a way that wasn't quite friendly anymore. He blinked. _Wait._

Tali pressed her body back and forth in his hands, still smiling up at him, encouraging him, and Garrus had to admit that it felt good. It did. Tali didn't care about his rank or his face; she was his friend, and she cared about him. Her waist was firm and warm under his hands. She was solid, real—and willing, it looked like. _But he hadn't wanted this._

He swallowed, moved one hand to hers again, and called, "Niels, Goto! Come join us!"

Sending up a literal SOS was the coward's way out, but Tali handled it with grace, willingly moving over to Niels when Garrus handed her off and spun Kasumi into his arms. The thief was smirking slightly. She knew what he was doing, but she curled her hands over his shoulders and moved her legs to the beat anyway, turning what had been freestyle into something more like an Earthen Latin dance. Garrus stared at her feet, picking up the rhythm. He led clumsily, but he managed.

"Not bad, big guy," Goto murmured. "We'll turn you into a dancer yet. Don't suppose you could call Jacob over here too?"

Garrus tilted his head. "Would you really want me to?" Goto talked loudly and often about how attractive Taylor was, but he'd never seen her actually make a move on him.

Kasumi sighed dramatically. "I just like looking at him." She glanced in Taylor's direction and growled playfully, then looked back at Garrus. "But you're right. You should dance with Sarah or Gabby too," she suggested in a complete change of topic. "They look a little lonely."

He took the point: Calling Goto to rescue him from Tali was fine; it'd go over easier if he didn't show a preference for anyone. So after the song ended, he did ask Patel to dance—a silly number with a quick beat they mostly freestyled. They laughed and had a good time, and by the time Garrus returned to his seat, he was out of breath and sweating a little.

There was a fresh creyis in front of him. Garrus glanced at Joker. The pilot shrugged. "Don't look at me. You've got a friend." Joker nodded toward the bar. Garrus looked over and saw a turian woman standing there. She tipped him a nod, staring steadily, inviting him over.

 _And there goes the evening._ Garrus ran his finger along the edge of the glass. "Did you see the bartender pour?"

"I did," Donnelly said. His uniform was unbuttoned a bit and the alcohol fumes were strong on him. "I've been watching her. That girl can make drinks at a snap of your fingers. What's the problem?" he laughed. "Worried about a date rape drug? That your lady friend'll try to poison you? Bit early for that, isn't it?"

Garrus guessed from the question that Shepard hadn't let the events of a few days ago spread around the ship, but Taylor's head snapped around. "Someone sent you another drink? She a merc?" he demanded.

Garrus shrugged. "If Ken saw the drink poured, I'll go over there. Try to work out what she wants."

"Here's a wild idea: maybe she just wants to _talk to you_ ," Joker suggested, with heavy sarcasm. "No, you're right. I'd suspect poison too."

"Yeah, that's not as funny as you think it is, Joker," Jacob said. "I'll keep an eye out, Garrus. I've got your back."

"Thanks." He got up and walked over to the woman by the bar.

He extended his hand. "Garrus Vakarian. And you are?"

She shook hands. "Impressed," she said in an ironic, lilting mezzo. Her subharmonics agreed. She was definitely interested. The part of Garrus that had been worried about another attempted murder relaxed, making way for an entirely different kind of anxiety. "Rastel Gyrion. You're a spacer."

"What gave it away?" Garrus drawled.

"Mmm. The human and quarian friends? The company logo on the sleeves of some of the fatigues over there?" Rastel mused. "I'm guessing you're _not_ a merchant." Her caramel-covered eyes dragged over his scars, but for once, Garrus felt she was more fascinated than afraid. _There's a switch._

He looked her over. The wear on her plates suggested she was a few years his senior, but she was still in good shape. He saw hard, lean muscle underneath the long sleeves of her red-and-black tailored shirt, her posture was close to parade rest without even thinking about it, and the alcohol smell on her breath was light. If she was a merc, she was a professional. "Guessing you're not either," he said.

She smirked. "I do some work for Elanus," she admitted. "Accompanying a trader from Noveria. But you—" She hummed, looking over at his crewmates speculatively. "Quasi-military, multilateral mission—"She looked back at him. "But you're no Terminus boy. Those are Cipritine tattoos. You're an interesting one, Garrus Vakarian."

"Well. I try." He hadn't had any problems with Elanus. This was the chance he'd been waiting for, and it wouldn't take much with this one, Garrus knew. Another drink, a couple dances, a compliment or two, and they could be out of here. Rastel was looking for company, and he probably even had enough credits left for a cheap room somewhere that wasn't crawling with vermin. _How long has it been? Six months? Longer?_

 _You ought to jump at her. Miraculously, she's not out to kill you. She's friendly and interested, mostly sober, and she's not selling anything here. And she's turian._ So why did he feel more sick than thrilled?

"Been a while since your last furlough?" Rastel guessed.

Garrus's neck warmed, and he rubbed it instinctively. "That obvious?"

"You weren't shy with your friends earlier," she observed. "Somehow it still works for you. Finish your drink," she suggested. "We'll see what we can do about your nerves." She winked, then seeing his expression, hesitated. "You got a girl back home?" she asked.

"No," he rushed to say. "No. But—"he sighed. "Another for the lady," he told the bartender, flipping a cred piece over. "Thanks for the drink," he said to Rastel.

She regarded him, confused—but he didn't think offended. The bartender slid her another glass. "Sure," she said. "Have a good night, Garrus Vakarian."

He forced a smile. "You, too." He walked back to the others. _Idiot. Idiot. Idiot._

Tali was sitting down by Joker again. "How'd it go?" she asked, only a trace of disappointment in her voice. "Are you going back over there? She's obviously got excellent taste."

Garrus could tell she meant her encouragement. He looked down at her. _I should really be so lucky._ "Or terrible, as the case may be. She was nice. Nice enough she'll find someone better to spend the evening with."

Taylor chuckled, but he was obviously relieved. "So, not a murderer, but you struck out anyway. Tough luck, Garrus."

"Not every guy thinks with their dick, Taylor," Gabby told him. "Maybe he just wasn't interested."

Donnelly rolled his eyes expressively. "Or maybe Vakarian thinking she was out to kill him just killed the mood." A thought struck him. "Unless she was old and ugly. Was she old and ugly?"

"Not that old, and a lot better-looking than me."

"So let me get this straight: a reasonably attractive, nice lady turian is somehow into _you_ , buying you nonpoisoned drinks and everything, and you walk away?" Joker shook his head. "Man, if I could get laid without the risk of breaking my pelvis, I would be all over the one-night stand. Something's seriously wrong with you."

Patel, on Joker's other side, shoved him. "If Vakarian doesn't want to, he doesn't want to. Lay off, okay?"

At the same time Donnelly turned to Joker and said, "Really? You could break your pelvis from a little casual action? You have actually had sex, right?"

Joker grimaced. "Sure, and a broken pelvis. Not fun. There are workarounds, but it's not exactly the kind of thing you can explain to a girl on a night of shore leave. Properly positioned pillows or a visit to the ER—either way it's a bit of a buzzkill."

"That's the worst," Donnelly sympathized. "But you're a fine-looking man, even if your bones are made of glass. I'm sure you could find a nice girl to give you a little head action—"

Kasumi sighed, stood, and reached out her hand. "Come on, Garrus," she said. "Let's dance before things get a little too interesting over here."

Trying not to feel too grateful, Garrus took her up on the offer.

He tried to stay long enough that it wasn't too obvious he wasn't exactly having the time of his life anymore. Joker, Donnelly, and Tali were more than a little tipsy, Hawthorne was grinding on an asari like the two of them should really start heading for the exit, and Gabby and Sarah were laughing on the dance floor again after coming back for some water and a snack twice before Garrus nodded to the others. "It's been fun, but I think I'll head out," he said.

There was the token protest, but no one really pressed him to stay, and Tali raised her hand to say goodbye. "I'm going to stay for a while. I'll see you back at the ship."

Garrus regarded her for a moment. He'd hurt her pride tonight, he knew— _though I had no idea she was actually interested_. She probably needed a little distance, but she was slurring her words and swaying in her seat in a way he didn't like. "Don't stay out too late."

She chuckled. "Don't worry, Mother. I'll be fine."

"We'll see she gets back to the _Normandy_ in one piece," Niels told him. "We'd be useless without our quarian engineer."

"Damn right you would," Tali said, lifting her drink again. She caught Garrus's eye out of the side of her visor. "Oh, go on, you party pooper. _Keelah se'lai_." She waved him off fondly. He smiled at her, tipped her a wave, and got lost.

* * *

Leaving the pulsing music of Eternity behind, Nos Astra quickly fell quiet. Most businesses were shut down at this hour. Even most of the trading floor, though Garrus saw lights on at a few kiosks that did trade with headquarters on the other side of the planet or across the galaxy. The streets were empty of individuals. Instead, people traveled in loud, laughing groups of two to five—or skulking ones with darting eyes and hidden weapons. These were the citizens of the Nos Astra night—innocent and otherwise.

Garrus felt restless—and not nearly drunk enough for the thoughts, questions, and self-recriminations buzzing and bouncing around in his skull. _When are you going to get another chance to blow off some steam? You could be dead in weeks._

His feet wouldn't take him back to the _Normandy_ yet. He knew it might be reckless, but he wandered through the side streets until he came to a public garden. Broad, silver avenues shone in the lamplight, lined with artisan gravel. Purple shrubs from Thessia had been trimmed in short, delicate spirals at the corners of the walkways in between long, dark, green hedges. Flowers dripped from trees and peeked out from beds on the side of the paths. Garrus sat on one of the benches oriented toward a fountain burbling down from some shiny piece of abstract public art that probably cost a fortune and looked like nothing at all.

Garrus, leaned back on his hands, feigning complete ease. He kept his gaze on the fountain, but in his peripherals, he watched the people passing. He kept an eye out for weapons or hostility, but mostly, he studied how they related to one another, tried to objectively study everyone's features. Most of the women were asari, naturally, but all of them had different partners, and every once in a while, a human or a turian couple, or two or three salarians together would walk by.

 _The problem with knowing you're being irrational is that it doesn't necessarily stop the irrationality_. _All that insecurity still knots up there, insisting it have its say. Rationally, you know you probably haven't become a deviant in the last two months, Garrus, that you would have known if you'd been one all along._

Yet, here he sat.

The truth was, interspecies attraction was generally rare. Curiosity always had its say, and there was porn of everything, but biologically, it was impossible for a species to sustain itself if its members were continually hooking up in couplings that couldn't produce viable offspring. Asari short-circuited this genetic hardwiring in most species' brains through a mixture of telepathic/empathic suggestion and _actually_ being able to produce viable offspring with any species in the galaxy. Interspecies couples that didn't feature an asari were much more sensational—thus the success of vids like _Fleet and Flotilla._ They had the draw of novelty with a side of fetishism and shades of taboo.

Garrus had never had a fetish for aliens. He didn't necessarily judge those who did—it had just never been one of his particular kinks. He'd experienced flickers of attraction to Shepard's energy, to Tali's voice, back on the _SR-1_ and written them off as flukes. But back in Eternity, he knew he'd had a moment with Tali, that he'd had an opportunity there—and part of him had wanted to take it. But the reason most of him hadn't, that he'd walked away from a reasonably attractive and very available turian woman too— _the reason you're quietly freaking out at close to 100 hours in a random Nos Astra garden_ —was that now his attraction to Shepard had become a constant, pressing fact.

A fact—and an aberration, Garrus had to admit as he watched the citizens of the Nos Astra night passed by, murmuring softly to one another. Aesthetically, asari and other human and quarian women were all nice enough to look at, like looking at stylized paintings, but he couldn't imagine ever wanting to sleep with them. It was still the turian women that got his attention—the height, the movement patterns, the facial features, the familiarity. He could say what was attractive about them—delicate fringe, sharp eyes, smooth and even plates, controlled and powerful movements.

But asari, humans, turians, or the rare quarian that passed, it was impossible to ignore that most of the couples passing drew a bit closer together when they walked by him. The rare irresponsible parents still walking around with sleepy children pulled their children in and walked a little faster. Garrus sighed. While it was nice that it didn't look like he was going to have a repeat of the café incident—these were civilians—this was unpleasant in its own way. He understood that a horrifically scarred male turian alone was not someone most people wanted to meet in a garden late at night, but he was minding his own business. But the way they were looking at him— _if this were a private property, I wonder if they'd report me as a suspicious character._ Garrus didn't smoke, but suddenly he had the wild desire for a cigarette, something a little bigger than the Phalanx to lay across his lap—something to make him look _really_ sinister. Another part of him wanted to drop his gaze or to wave and smile at the young asari girl walking with her parents, staring wide-eyed at him across the courtyard, reassure her somehow. _Everyone says you don't have to apologize, but damn, if the urge isn't strong._

These people were clueless. They walked down the silver lanes under the moonlight in a safe, affluent part of Nos Astra, confident they wouldn't be held up in an alley, that Collectors wouldn't fall from the sky and pack them up into a ship. They had no idea. Their crimes were tidy, white-collar thefts—anything messier they kept at arms-length, in neat, black-and-white rows in a ledger of paid-off mercs, assassins, and runners. They washed their hands every morning and thought they were clean. The true innocents here were even more oblivious. They ignored the war going on under their feet—the war that was coming. He wanted to give every one of them a kick up the ass until they opened their eyes. He hoped every one of them never had to.

Lost in his thoughts, Garrus still noticed the moment he was no longer the most interesting person in the Nos Astra garden, when two or three pairs of eyes stopped darting to him every few seconds and widened at someone coming around the hedge. He heard shoes with hard soles and no heel—they crunched the gravel in a firm, assured stride very different from the steps of the loafers or fashion heels of the citizens he'd been hearing around him for the last several minutes.

Garrus tensed, ready to leave, but when he glanced at the corner, he almost smiled when he caught sight of her. In the asari-style Nos Astra garden, Shepard stuck out more than the scar on his face. The other civilians all looked away from her half a second after their double-takes. Despite the street clothes, her military hairstyle and the heavy pistol strapped to her thigh still said she was no one to screw with. But Garrus took the time to take in the whole incongruous effect.

 _That's another straight from Earth or Arcturus._ Dressed down for the first time since they'd landed on Illium, Shepard looked _epically_ Earthen. The shoes that had been crunching on the gravel had blunt toes as well as flat heels. They were made of some sort of canvas, and Garrus had to shake his head at the laces, so easy to trip over if they came untied. She was wearing faded jeans that hugged her hips and thighs and then flared out just a bit at the knee. Her top was equally casual but much softer-looking—a blue-and-white-striped gray hoodie.

Garrus tipped his fingers at her in an ironic salute as she approached. Sometimes he wondered how a career military woman could be so nonconformist.

 _Probably the same way you are._

She sat down beside him on the bench.

"Shepard."

"Garrus. Have fun with the others?"

It didn't surprise him Shepard knew he'd been out—she didn't miss much. "It was nice to spend time with some of the crew," Garrus answered. "But hangover's a bitch when you're on duty. Wanted to get out while I was still enjoying my last night of shore leave. Why didn't you come along?"

Shepard shrugged. "Samara and Thane are still getting settled in. Wanted to make sure they were ready to fly out tomorrow. Besides, the crew can't really come together with the commander breathing down their necks." She leaned back, crossing her ankles and observing the wind through the trees. "And I have to say, I've never been a huge fan of crowds. Came here for a bit of fresh air a couple hours ago, but it's late. I was about to head back to the _Normandy._ When I saw you over here, I didn't want to leave without saying hi."

They sat in silence for a moment, enjoying the evening. Shepard made no move to get up. "Am I going to have to leave with you here?" Garrus asked.

Shepard rolled her eyes. "You can take care of yourself, Garrus. You've proven that more than once. I don't want you going up against any merc cells on your own, but when you left the ship in civilian clothes, I figured I didn't have to worry about that."

Garrus hummed. _It's a bad idea to stay_ , he thought. _Counterproductive to everything I wanted to do here._ But his mouth was already opening. "Then do you mind some company?"

He knew she was still upset about how Archangel had bled over into their operations here, but when she glanced at him, the corner of her mouth quirked in a way that could be a smile. "Never yours," she said.

They stood, and he fell into step with her. Shepard didn't seem to feel like talking, and that was fine by him. He listened to their feet on the gravel and then the concrete, watched the shadows passing over them in the lamplight—first the shadows of the trees and then the shadows of the Illium skyline.

Contentment and quiet stretched between them as they walked, and with a sense of resignation, Garrus acknowledged that it was the closest to happy he'd been all day. Walking down a random street _not_ talking to Shepard was better than dancing with Tali, trying to flirt with an interested turian woman, or harmlessly shooting the breeze with the crew.

Without even trying, dressed in clothes most other humans on Illium would be mortified to be seen in, she was the sexiest woman on the street—and it had nothing to do with the way she looked.

 _Though there's something to be said for that too._ The hoodie Shepard wore didn't do nearly as much for her body as the asari dresses the other women wore, but jeans looked better on her than they _ever_ had on Erash or Joker, he thought, sneaking a glance at her hips as she watched a ship flying into the port. The streetlights shone on her hair and cast shadows under the long, lean angles of her face and frame. Her scars had all faded away, he realized. It was a harder, thinner, more complicated face than most of the asari and humans you were likely to see—but stronger, too, and more interesting.

Shepard shifted, and Garrus looked away as they turned into the port. "I've got another meeting with Liara tomorrow," Shepard told him. "I've been doing some more work for her around Illium, helping her track the Shadow Broker."

"The Broker? That's who T'Soni's after?" Garrus asked. The Shadow Broker was the biggest, most comprehensive information broker in the galaxy. A completely neutral, for-profit operator, the Shadow Broker sold information to the highest bidder. Always. They often operated on multiple sides of any given conflict. No one knew who they were, where they were based, and they had agents everywhere. Spectres and Council diplomats had failed to find the Shadow Broker, and anyone who dug too deep tended to wind up dead. Most people just accepted the Broker as an unpleasant fact of intersystem intelligence operations and went about their business.

"Seems so," Shepard said.

"Well. She doesn't lack ambition, that's for sure."

Shepard's face darkened. "I never thought I'd miss that naïve, awkward archaeologist walking around with her heart on her sleeve. Liked her, but wished she'd grow the hell up. But the galaxy needs more people like the person she was. What it didn't need was another ruthless shadow operative."

There was a strong edge of guilt to her voice. "You okay?" Garrus asked.

Shepard was quiet for a moment. They'd stopped in the dock. Neither of them wanted to go into the ship just yet. They stood looking up at that streamlined, wicked silhouette. The _Normandy_ was as beautiful and dangerous as the woman who commanded her, and she changed everyone who stepped aboard her. "I'm not sure if biologically I'm twenty-nine or thirty-one," Shepard told him, "but most of the time, I feel about seventy-five."

Garrus hummed. "Liara and I were talking before. Age stops mattering after a certain point when you're a soldier. Eventually, you've seen enough that you're old no matter how much of your life you _might_ still have ahead of you." _Might_ being the key word. Both of them were living on borrowed or stolen time. _Odds are, we won't live out the year_.

"I don't think I've ever been young," Shepard admitted. "But the past two years have lasted a lifetime." She looked sideways at him, and he knew she wasn't just thinking of Liara.

Garrus stepped up and bumped her shoulder with his. "Not so long. We're still flying the _Normandy_ and kicking Reaper ass—and while you have been improving, I'm still the better shot."

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "You cheat," she said, nodding at his visor. "And you aren't half as good with an assault rifle, Mr. Bigshot. I can gut the enemy with a submachine gun, a heavy pistol, or with head-melting tech and match you shot for shot as a sniper most days of the week. Who's really the better soldier?"

Garrus looked down at her. "I didn't hear a denial that I'm the better shot."

She socked him in the arm, but she was grinning. "You want to check in on Liara with me tomorrow? I know I haven't given you a lot of time off this leave."

Garrus shrugged. "I could've enjoyed a week of unbridled hedonism, two or three tragic romances. Done with fewer attempted murders. Frankly, it's more fun delving deep into Illium corruption and shooting mercenaries in its centers of culture. No place I would've rather been, Shepard."

Shepard made a face. "Think you must still be a little tipsy, Vakarian. You're getting sappy on me. Go to bed. I'll see you in the morning." She turned on her heel and stalked toward the airlock—but he'd already seen her blush.

Garrus watched her go long enough that, remembering how Massani had once called Taylor out, he was glad the dock was otherwise empty.

 _Okay._

 _Okay._ It was useless and stupid to look at a change in a combat situation and refuse to acknowledge and adapt. _Any soldier out of basic and worth a damn knows that when the terrain changes, when reinforcements arrive or tech gets an upgrade, when someone else takes charge and the enemy strategy shifts—you stop. You reevaluate, and then you change tactics._

 _Time to change tactics, Vakarian._

He boarded the _Normandy_ and headed back toward his battery. As he got ready for another night he probably wouldn't be able to sleep, he absently checked his omni-tool for messages, alerts from Miranda or texts from Solana—and he found one blinking message from an address he didn't know time-stamped about four hours ago.

 **I've found something. It's not a lot to go on, but I think I have a lead on your friend. I imagine you don't want to discuss it over an unsecured channel, but Shepard's coming into the office at 1100 to talk about some work she's been doing for me tomorrow. If you like, we can schedule a meeting before or afterwards—you'll probably need her leave to pursue my information.**

 **Regards,**

 **Liara**

Garrus swallowed and shut off his omni-tool. There was no way he was missing Shepard's appointment with T'Soni tomorrow.

* * *

 **A/N: I'll just—let you absorb that. Chapter was supposed to end with Thane's recruitment, then with Niels asking Garrus to go out with some of the crew, before I realized it ends a lot better here. But that leaves it my longest chapter to date, and one of my most packed. I'll try not to write such a long one again.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMS**


	19. Auld Lang Syne: Seas between Us

XIX

Auld Lang Syne: Seas between Us

"You're quiet," Shepard remarked the next morning as they walked across the Nos Astra trading floor for the second-to-last time the next morning. "Something wrong, or are you just hungover?"

Garrus forced a smile. "I had a few last night, but not enough that I'm really hurting. You should see Tali. She swears she's never drinking again and says Ken and Gabby are worse. I guess I just didn't sleep much. After you left last night, I saw a message from Liara. She says she's got a lead on Sidonis."

"Ah." There was a wealth of things she wouldn't say in the single syllable, and when he glanced at her, her face looked like a sealed airlock—shut down tight, and behind the lock, as cold as space. Her eyes were unreadable, but her fingers twitched at her side.

Sometimes he wondered just how far he could push her. He was, he knew. Part of him was driven to keep pushing, to _make_ her see his side of things, drag her into line. He'd always been a rebel, and sometimes it itched to answer to even the best damn commanding officer he'd ever known. Most of him knew enough to follow someone who _deserved_ her post more than any officer he'd ever known. If he mellowed another twenty years, he couldn't keep his head like Shepard did. She was direct—even blunt, impatient with idiots, and hated politics almost as much as he did—but she _never_ led or acted out of righteous anger in the way he'd struggled with all his life. He'd break the rules he set for himself time and time again in obedience to one overarching concept: Justice. He knew Shepard's measured pragmatism and steely principles were smarter and more stable.

Garrus usually didn't disagree with Shepard's principles as such. He _often_ disagreed with where she drew the line. The difference between them was that he was willing to be the arrogant bastard that made the call some higher authority couldn't—or wouldn't—make when she wasn't, that he was willing to sacrifice his morality along with his life to do what was required when she wasn't. He'd see justice done, damn whether _he_ stayed just; while _she'd_ stay just, damn whether justice was done.

He admired her conviction, he really did. _And in most situations, honestly? I'd make the sacrifice before I saw her make it._ Shepard's adherence to her personal code gave life a kind of stability. But this wasn't most situations. This was personal. This wasn't some abstract moral quandary—it was _his team_ that had been gunned down by an army when Sidonis gave them away. This time, he _needed_ Shepard to give in. He _needed_ her to admit that no personal moral sacrifice could be worse than letting Sidonis walk. "I need to know you'll help me find him, Shepard," Garrus said quietly. "I have to take care of this."

"I've said I'll help," Shepard snapped. She sighed. "You need closure. I know."

"I do."

She hesitated then, and shook her head. "I just remember once you were a cop. You were a soldier, but you weren't a killer. I guess I haven't given up hope that before this is all over, you can get back to that."

Garrus looked down at her. "There's no going back, Shepard," he told her. "There's no way to erase what happened, the things I've done. There might be a way to go _forward_. Maybe. I don't know. Most days I can't see it, even when we're not going up against Terminus mercs. But if I'm ever going to have a shot, I have to do everything I can to make things up to my team. I have to make sure the man who betrayed us dies."

Shepard held his gaze for a long moment. Then, as they climbed the stair Liara's office lobby, she simply reached out, squeezed his wrist once, and let go. Garrus looked for Liara's assistant, but the place behind her desk was empty.

"Is Liara supposed to be off today, or did her secretary take a sick day?" Garrus wondered.

Shepard tried to smile. Couldn't manage it. "Something like that," she said, and walked right into Liara's office.

T'Soni was behind her desk. She hardly looked up from her computer as they approached and took the chairs across from hers. "Shepard. Garrus. Good morning." Liara said. Her eyes flicked up to Shepard then. "Nyxeris had some interesting data hidden away. Thank you, Shepard. I wouldn't have caught her without you. I'm one step closer to the Shadow Broker thanks to you." _The assistant's dead, then. Spying?_

T'Soni moved her cursor across her screen, and Shepard's omni-tool buzzed. "Here. Nyxeris was very well compensated. You need it more than I do."

Shepard pulled up her omni-tool. Her eyebrows rose, and she frowned. Garrus guessed Liara had paid her a lot of credits. But Shepard didn't argue; Liara was right. Ship upgrades, weaponry, and fuel was expensive. They needed the money. "You have any trouble with her?" Shepard asked.

Liara's mouth turned up. "She was very talented. I imagine that, had she been ordered to assassinate me, I would have never seen her coming. But her barriers needed practice. Practice I'm afraid she won't be getting."

Her voice was cool and collected. Garrus wondered if she could see it hitting Shepard like he did. _She didn't use to be a killer, either. But T'Soni knows Shepard. She knows she's hurting her here, and it's almost like she wants to, like she's trying to push her away—paying her far more than a recon job's worth; casually admitting she's murdered a spy instead of firing her or sending her to prison._

T'Soni wanted Shepard gone, and Garrus didn't think she was just trying to get Shepard to leave before they discussed their business. _What's she hiding?_

Shepard stiffened, but she kept the conversation going. "What's the next step in your hunt?"

Liara steepled her fingers. "Now I gather information. Peel away layers of lies. And shine light into the shadows. And when I find the Shadow Broker, I hit him with a biotic field so strong that's what's left of his body will fit into a coffee cup." There was a venomous, hateful edge to her that Garrus recognized. He felt it every time he thought about what Sidonis had done: the desire to see him personally dead for what he'd done, that nothing would be right until he was.

Shepard was frowning. "What the hell did he do to you, Liara? I've never seen you like this."

For a long moment, Liara didn't say anything. She seemed to be wavering on the edge of a confession, but her eyes were locked on Shepard's face, and Garrus somehow knew she wouldn't lie. She couldn't. "Did Cerberus ever tell you how they recovered your body?" she asked.

It wasn't at all what he'd expected, but suddenly everything fell into place—how Liara had wound up here, her secretiveness, why she seemed to want to push Shepard away. Garrus glanced at Shepard as they came to the same realization. "Miranda."

The Illusive Man had warned Shepard T'Soni wasn't trustworthy; Lawson had avoided T'Soni's office like the plague even when invited to go there—all so this wouldn't come out.

Shepard fell back in her chair. "It was you," she said, looking at Liara.

Liara had cracked, and now all the guilt and anxiety she'd been hiding behind that veneer of professionalism came bleeding out of her. "Yes. I gave it to them. I gave you to them, Shepard. Because they said they could rebuild you. And to do that, I had to take it from the Shadow Broker, who was going to sell your corpse to the Collectors."

There was a story there, but Shepard didn't care about that, and both Garrus and Liara knew it. Shepard was frozen, expressionless. Garrus saw her swallow, close her eyes. Time seemed to stretch before she opened them again. In a carefully controlled voice, she said then, "Thanks for saving my body from the Collectors."

"But you're angry," Liara said. It wasn't a question.

"Angry," Shepard echoed, as if testing the sound. "I guess that's one word for it. Aside from the fact that people aren't supposed to come back from the dead and they did things to me to pull it off I don't even like to think about—leaving all that alone for a minute, I have to wonder if you were paying attention during our tour together." Her voice was shaking now. She was pale. Her jaw, her hands on her chair, everything about her was tight with tension.

 _This won't be good._

Garrus had only seen Shepard like this once before, on Ontarom as she faced down one of the scientists responsible for what had happened to the Akuze colony and the 179 Marines. _A Cerberus scientist._ Liara glanced at Garrus, as if for reassurance, but his mandibles tightened. He wasn't sure what Shepard was going to do.

Liara hadn't given him the information he needed yet. _So will you stop Shepard if she tries something—for personal vengeance?_ Revulsion roiled in his gizzard—at Liara, at himself—and he sat as unsure of what he'd do in the next thirty seconds as he was of what Shepard would do.

"You saw the experiments Cerberus ran on the thorian creepers, all the scientists that died," Shepard said. "The colonists they let get taken by the geth, just to see what would happen. You saw the insane rachni they tried to train to be their attack dogs—living, thinking creatures. You weren't tuning all that out?"

"No, but—"

Shepard cut Liara off. "You heard about what they did to Admiral Kohoku, how they killed his squad. You weren't in the team with me for all of that, so maybe you forgot."

"I didn't forget!" Liara cried. Tears were streaming down her face.

"Then you forgot it was the same way the Akuze colony went down, my entire unit back in '77. Except for the one man that survived that they kept for years, torturing him and experimenting him on like a lab rat. You couldn't have remembered that." The worst part was that she didn't even raise her voice, Garrus thought. It was as cold as the cliffs on Noveria, and her sarcasm bit like the wind in a blizzard.

"I knew it was wrong!" Liara shouted. "I knew what they were, that they'd use you for their own business. I thought it was worth it to get you back. It was them or the Collectors, Shepard! I did the best I could! I'm sorry!"

Shepard stared flatly across at T'Soni. "No. You had a choice, Liara. You could have let me go. When you recovered my body, you could've told Cerberus to go to hell and given it to the Alliance for proper disposal. That's what you should've done."

But at that, everything in Garrus rebelled. "No."

Shepard and Liara both looked at him. "Garrus?" Liara asked.

"No," he repeated. "Shepard, don't ask Liara to be sorry for bringing you back. We need you. The galaxy needs you. You're not done yet. Who else is going to stop the Reapers?"

Her response was immediate. "You." Garrus felt sick, hearing how much faith she had in him, knowing just how unwarranted it was. Liara's face twisted with sadness and pity, but then Shepard looked at her too. "Either of you. Anyone."

Garrus shook his head. "Not like you," he said simply. "And not _without_ you. Never." He had his gifts, he knew. So did Liara, Kaidan, Wrex, all of them. But no one could do what Shepard did.

"He's right," Liara agreed. "You brought us together, Shepard. You saved the galaxy from Saren and the Reapers. You're the only one that can save it when they return." Garrus saw the weight of those words cover Shepard's face and bend her shoulders, but before she could start objecting, Liara was admitting, "But that's not why I gave you to Cerberus. I did it because _I_ couldn't lose you."

Shepard met Liara's eyes. The anger had drained out of her. She wasn't going to do anything stupid, but her sadness and weariness was absolute when she responded. "Liara, they own me now. And that's on you. Jeff and Karin don't know it, but they're hostages on the new _Normandy_ Cerberus built to be my cage. Cerberus is listening to my every word, watching my every move. They say I don't have a control chip in me, no failsafes or kill switches, but with all the cybernetics in me, I have no way of knowing that's true. And with their AI running the _Normandy_ , it doesn't matter. They don't even need any of that. She could vent me out the airlock. Depressurize my quarters or lock me inside. If I deviate from their agenda in any way—"she shrugged. "Even with Garrus and Tali with me, I'm not sure if I can get out of this one. And it's Cerberus. They're the people that were responsible for Akuze."

Liara crumpled in on herself, sobbing in earnest now. "You—you're n-never going to forgive me for this, a-are you?"

Shepard sighed. She raised her hand, dropped it. "I'm not sure I can. Liara—I—I get why you did it. I do. But you did the wrong thing."

"I can't believe that," Liara cried. "I-I can't, Shepard. The things I've done, the sacrifices I've made—I have to believe they were worthwhile. N-not just for you. For _me_! Do you understand that?"

"That debt you have to repay," Garrus guessed. "Something you incurred messing with the Shadow Broker to get her back?"

Liara turned bleak, tear-filled eyes to him. "I wish we could turn it back to before Alchera—for all of us. You. You. Me. But I can't. I'm sorry."

Shepard stood. "Yeah. Me too." She dropped her eyes. "I'll see you later, Liara. Garrus—I'll see you back at the ship." She stalked out of the room.

Part of him wanted to follow her, needed to follow her. _But I have to know._ "You found Sidonis?"

Liara was staring at the door. Her lips curved up, but the resulting expression was nothing like a smile. "I brought Shepard back from the dead," she said. "Everything I've done, everything I've become has been to achieve that goal—and to make up for what I did to do it." She looked back at him then. "And you're the one she's going to forgive."

Garrus was silent. What was there to say? He understood why she had done it. He agreed with her. He would have never dreamt of doing the same. _Shepard said it. People aren't supposed to come back from the dead. And you gave her to Cerberus to do it._ T'Soni was about a thousand times crazier than he was, but that kind of crazy had consequences. _My kind of crazy has consequences._

T'Soni didn't answer him right away. Instead, her fingers flew over her omni-tool, and her monitor rotated in front of her until it faced him. A vid came up on the screen, time-stamped four days ago. Security footage from a traffic cam across the street from a Nos Astra café. And in the corner of the screen, the smug expression on an asari's face slid off, only to be replaced with a sudden panic as she stared at the turian across from her. Her biotics flared, and she lunged, only for the turian to seize her in one of the military holds they taught in advanced hand-to-hand for disabling amateur biotics. He thrust a gun in her face.

Garrus watched his encounter with the Eclipse assassin play out. There was no sound on the vid. It wasn't clear what either of them had said—but everything that had happened was clear as crystal, captured play-for-play on the camera. When he'd circled the table to stand behind her, the camera had gotten a great angle on his ravaged face.

"Murder," Liara said. "It'd be the verdict in any asari court. The waitress did turn over the glass, which tested for a very strong, very nasty poison, and the fingerprints of a mercenary who had been arrested twice before on lesser charges. The waitress also testified the assassin physically attacked first. But this vid tells the real story. You'd disabled the mercenary—quite effectively. You could have incapacitated her any number of ways, left her for the authorities. Simply shooting her the moment she attacked would have been a clearer case for self-defense. But you held her helpless, intimidated her, tried to force a suicide, and then shot her, when it was already obvious she couldn't do a thing to stop you. And you missed the camera."

"Where did you get this?" Garrus asked.

"I've had a VI scanning for vid of Shepard and every associate I know of all over Nos Astra since the _Normandy_ landed," Liara answered. "A security measure in the event of a situation like this. Shepard's Spectre status may have been reinstated, but Illium authorities aren't mandated to respect it outside of Council space. I wanted a way to protect you if some degree of lawbreaking became necessary. The surveillance has been expensive—but apparently worth it. The Nos Astra police never saw this, and they won't. But Garrus—"She broke off, pressed her lips together.

Garrus assessed her. _What's her game?_ "You're good at this," he remarked at last. "Anticipating information outlets, preparing for contingencies, leveraging intelligence. You're a natural." He leaned forward, bracing himself on his knees. "Do you mind telling me what the point of that was?"

She was angry. He got that. Angry at Shepard, angry at him. T'Soni was looking at a galaxy where she could try to do the right thing and hurt the woman she loved beyond any possibility of repair—while he could run to the edge of the galaxy to die, recklessly throw out so much of what that woman had taught them both, and be forgiven for it.

But T'Soni didn't have any real moral high ground here, and Garrus was angry too. Sure, he was angry he'd forgotten to scan for cameras when he'd realized Neryn meant to kill him and known what he would do. But he was angrier now that he'd acted the way he had at all—angrier than T'Soni could ever be. _One for one. Justice for those that can't claim it for themselves. Never personal. What you do matters, but so does why you do it. Those were the rules._

 _I've gone outside the lines before. I could sit here all day saying Neryn deserved it, that Harga did. They did. But in those moments, whenever I became whatever the bastard of the day deserved, when I_ enjoyed _it—did I deserve anything less?_

 _There's a reason I drew those lines. There's a reason Shepard does._

T'Soni swiveled her monitor back around, and he heard the standard programmed sound effect that was her shredding the vid file. "There's a new identity specialist on the Citadel," she said. "According to my contacts, in the criminal underground, he's known as Fade. He's an expert in erasing information trails, forging official documents and creating a false digital footprint on the extranet. Seems particularly good at getting around Citadel Security protocols.

"A turian matching Lantar Sidonis's description docked on the Citadel around three weeks ago under the name Jirhael Thenoplaexus. He'd already passed through customs before his paperwork registered as a forgery. I was able to trace the forgery through multiple shell proxies and a midlevel encryption to an Eclipse cell on Omega." Liara offered him one end of a hard-line connector. He took it from her, plugged it into a manufactured port on his omni-tool, and a double-encrypted file appeared on his interface.

"Everything I'm telling you now is in that file," she said, sliding over a piece of paper on which she had written two codes. Garrus took a shot of the paper with his visor's camera, slid the paper back across the desk, and Liara picked it up and fed it into her shredder. "Jirhael Thenoplaexus disappears two days after landing on the Citadel. Maybe Sidonis had a reason to believe Eclipse might not be completely invested in assisting his escape—or he knew you would come after him."

Garrus handed Liara back her connector and clasped his hands together. "He was right on both counts. If anyone in that Eclipse cell was still alive, I'd bet everything I have that they'd be after him now too. He'd deserve it. But I'm going to get there first."

Liara laid her hands flat across her desk and looked him in the eye. "Garrus—before. My point?" She smiled slightly. "I hope you know I wasn't asking for anything, and I wasn't threatening you. I know we haven't been close, but I do consider you a friend, all the more because—"she stopped, and dropped her eyes. "Well. You know why. But I do want you to think. Think carefully.

"You and I have done terrible things. You've stopped some terrible people. I helped others. We both hoped it would serve some greater good, but I think both of us have faced terrible consequences." She took a deep breath, her expression pained. "You might think after everything you've lost, there's nothing else you can lose, but—"her expression hardened, her eyes flickered up to his again, and she straightened, steeling herself. "I'm sorry: it wasn't true when you went to Omega, and it's even less true now. You've had something of a reprieve, and I was able to extend it this week. But I might not be there next time."

Garrus sighed. He looked past T'Soni. It was easier. Her eyes were too bright, too earnest. There was a difference between a crying civilian on sec duty and seeing the drying tear tracks on the face of a woman with whom—like she'd said—he hadn't been close but had always considered a friend. "My guess is it would've been half an hour. Maybe less. If Shepard had been half an hour later the day she found me, I'd be dead. There's no reason I survived. I shouldn't have. Sidonis deserves what's coming for him—but if there's some impartial spirit of justice out there somewhere, I know what it'd say about me."

"I am not sure you understand me—"Liara began.

Garrus stood. "I understand," he interrupted. He shook his head. "I—I know what it's worth. That Shepard's back. Several billion credits, from what the doctor and Miranda tell me." He tried to smile at the joke. Couldn't. "I know what her trust is worth." He walked to the window, putting physical distance between himself and Liara's gaze—a dead giveaway, and he didn't even care. _I know what it's worth that even after all the complications here, she wanted me backing her up every time we went out. That she's letting me stand where you'd give anything to if you weren't committed to your own mission—even though I don't deserve it any more than you do or maybe even less._ "You have to believe me—the _last_ thing I want to do is disappoint her. I just— _they trusted me_."

"The people Sidonis betrayed," Liara finished softly. He heard her chair roll back, and she walked up quietly to stand beside him. "Kill him, if that is what you need. Just be careful."

She turned to face him, and he shook her hand. "I'll do what I can to limit your exposure off of Illium," Liara promised. "Degrade mercenary communications, provide misinformation to the wrong people that ask."

"You don't have to put yourself at risk. I have a few tricks up my sleeve. A little out of date, now, but five weeks ago, our tech was five years ahead of everyone else's."

Liara shook her head. "Let me help. Please."

Garrus looked at her, then nodded. "Thank you. Really." Liara smiled sadly, and Garrus left her to her hunt. He needed to tell Shepard about his.

* * *

 **A/N: Goodbye for a very long time, Illium.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMS**


	20. Know Your Enemy: One

XX

Know Your Enemy: One

Right before they were due to jump to Tuchanka that afternoon, Shepard came over the com again. "Hope everyone enjoyed your shore leave, because we're jumping right into action. The Illusive Man's sent some intel. We're not heading to Tuchanka just yet. There's a damaged Collector ship abandoned out near the Traverse; we have an opportunity here to get some real information on the Omega-4 relay and the technology of the enemy. I'm not ruling out the possibility the Collectors left something nasty behind, so I want all of you to be ready for combat or retreat on my order. Lawson, Vakarian, arm up for recon. Shepard out."

Garrus glanced over the battery console. He paged Joker. "Gun's ready to go if we end up in a fight. You know much about this?"

"Just what I've been told," Joker told him. "Big-ass Collector ship out in the middle of nowhere, dead in the water. I'll be ready. Now get off the line. We've got to fly."

Garrus braced himself for the first jump, felt the engines fire as the mass effect relay shot them across the galaxy. The edge of the Traverse was a lot farther from Illium than the DMZ, they'd be making at least a couple of extra jumps. There were usually ten to twenty minutes between each relay jump—it took that long for Joker to fly off their momentum, turn the _Normandy_ around, and fly the ship back to the relay. Garrus walked down to the armory to wait.

Miranda and Shepard walked in a few minutes after he did, Miranda in a new combat jumpsuit, Shepard in her armor once again. "Expecting trouble?" Taylor asked her.

Shepard shrugged, checking the clips in her Locust. "Not sure. Ship's a cruiser, according to reports. Hard to tell if a ship that size is really abandoned. I'd rather have most of the crew manning the _Normandy_ , ready to leave if there's trouble than take a large boarding party. Taylor, you've got command while we're gone. Garrus, Miranda, I need you two to take a firsthand look at anything we find up there. Keep a special eye out for anything the professor can use. I want Mordin on the _Normandy_ , but I'll just bet he's going to be the first person we want to talk to when we get back."

The engines swelled beneath them. The four of them gripped armory tables as Joker sent the ship hurtling through the next relay. "We'll take care of things here," Taylor assured them as the ship smoothed out. "Be ready to bug out the second the shuttle gets back if we have to. You want the Cain again?"

Shepard shook her head. "Rather have something with a few more shots in it. Give me the particle beam."

"You got it," Taylor told her, handing it over. Shepard spun her Locust around and holstered it opposite her pistol, took the particle beam from Taylor with both hands, and attached it to the back of her hard suit. Garrus attached his Vindicator beside his Mantis.

"Be careful," Taylor told them. He clasped Miranda's arm, bumped fists with Garrus, and saluted Shepard as the three of them left and headed for the elevator.

Miranda looked at both of them. "Just the three of us. That makes a change."

Shepard's mouth quirked. "Used to be standard procedure on the _SR-1_. Keep the squad small enough there's backup on the _Normandy_. The size of the team now gives me the leeway to bring a little more power to bear on the enemy—but it can slow us down. I want to keep this fast and tight—in and out."

"Got a bad feeling about this?" Garrus asked.

"Let's just say it feels a little convenient," Shepard said grimly. "A Collector ship floating around just when we need one. It's too good of an opportunity to miss; the Illusive Man's right about that. But we should be ready."

The elevator doors opened on the shuttle bay. Niels was waiting for them, but the shuttle wasn't powered up yet—they still had at least a couple more jumps to go. Shepard gave him a nod and slid down to sit beside the shuttle. Garrus walked over and did the same. "Mmm. Just like old times by the Mako," he said. "Just lucky you're not driving."

Shepard's slap of his arm was purely to relieve her feelings—not much good against full armor. Niels chuckled, and Lawson cracked a smile, and they all tried not to think too much about what they might be heading into as the _Normandy_ hit the next relay.

* * *

The breach in the disabled ship was big enough for Niels to fly the shuttle through—which meant no air. Oddly enough, there was a mass effect gravity envelope around the ship that seemed to be holding up just fine, which made for an unsettling arrival aboard the Collector vessel right off the bat.

The ship was enormous, bigger than three professional biotiball stadiums, end to end, and mostly hollow inside. Garrus, Shepard, and Lawson crawled like insects on the crisscrossing ledges that ran down the inside. All the surfaces were made up of a same rough, organic material, similar to the exoskeletons of the Collectors themselves or the material they used to make their weapons. _It's like petrified rock. Or a hive._

The ship did seem to be empty, but every step they took inside it felt like an intrusion. The whole place seemed wrong—alien in a way no human, salarian, or asari ship had ever felt to him. The measured movements of the others told him the others felt the same deep unease. "Nice place they've got here," Garrus said over the radio.

"Shepard, I've compared the ship's EM signature to known Collector profiles," EDI said. "It is the vessel you encountered on Horizon."

Shepard's helmet swiveled. "Maybe the defense towers softened it for the turians."

Silently, Garrus cued up his visor's camera and began recording, looking around to take vid of the dimensions of the ship, the layout of the walkways. "The missing colonists might be aboard. If they're still alive."

"If they're aboard and dead, we'll still know more than we do now," Miranda said grimly. Her fingers tapped the grip of her weapon, and inside her helmet, Garrus saw some of her hair standing up—her biotics, reacting to her nervousness.

Garrus hoped they could find the missing colonists. It would be huge to reclaim those people from the Collectors, and any information they might have could be crucial to their ultimate victory. To survival. But without breathable air—the odds weren't great. And he wasn't ready to take any bets on whether they'd be able to hear anyone not hooked up to a radio in here.

The walkway ahead turned to the right—but on the left, they saw a small stack of five amber pods, each around two meters long, and shaped like a coffin. Each was gaping open—and empty. "Your reports mentioned containers like these on Horizon," she said. "These are the ones they used, aren't they? Only these are empty."

Many of the colonists on Horizon had emerged from the seeker paralysis within two hours of being stung. They had been fully aware even paralyzed, but he imagined how it must have been when they regained control—only to find out that there was no escape. "Horrible. Trapped in these pods, completely at the mercy of the Collectors."

"Where are they?" Shepard wondered, taking the right.

They passed something that looked like a console, and Shepard held up a hand and scanned it before moving on. The pathway was sloping down, and at the end was a pile of _something_. As it came into view, Shepard tensed, and Miranda hissed. "This looks bad," Garrus said.

Garrus was grateful for the minimal atmosphere, the air filters in his helmet. But seeing the pile of bodies for what it was without the heralds of decay in any natural environment was somehow even more disturbing. There were no maggots, no vorcha—just an oozing mound of detritus. Skin melted into skin, gray and green and purple, falling off of gray or yellow bones. Humorless, grinning skulls seen through withered, rotting lips. There were twenty, maybe thirty of them, naked or in rags, stacked onto one another without any rhyme or reason and left to rot. No signs of fire or any attempt at treating the dead with respect—it was a trash heap of human remains, sterile and abandoned.

He heard Shepard swallow, and he felt sick himself, but he flicked his eye toward 'zoom,' getting a record of the faces, the number of people laying there forgotten. "Why would the Collectors just leave a pile of bodies lying around?" Miranda asked. Her voice sounded thin and shaky.

"Must've been used for testing. I'd say these subjects didn't pass," Garrus said.

"There are worse things than death," Shepard remarked. If Miranda's voice was thin, hers was thick with grief, fury, and frustration. "Like being a test subject for twisted aliens."

Miranda's head turned toward Shepard. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it didn't."

Shepard looked back at her for a moment. "Sometimes it's not about making you feel better. Come on."

The walkway turned left, climbed for a bit, and then dipped low. And when the pathway leveled out, they'd reached a sort of lab station. Two medical tables, some equipment, and a terminal, and on one of the tables was not another human.

"That's a Collector," Miranda said, walking up to the outstretched naked corpse, four, empty, milky white eyes staring up at the ceiling. It was the first she'd ever seen in person, Garrus realized. "Were they experimenting on one of their own?"

Shepard was at the terminal. "Because that would be so new," she muttered under her breath. "EDI, I'm uploading the data from this terminal. See if you can figure out what they were up to."

"Data received. Analyzing," EDI reported. "The Collectors were running baseline genetic comparisons between their species and humanity," she told them.

 _One advantage of working with an AI_ , Garrus thought. _You get answers fast. But why would they care?_

"Are they looking for similarities?" Shepard wanted to know.

"I have no hypothesis on their motivations," EDI told her. "All I have are their preliminary results. They reveal something remarkable. A quad-strand genetic structure identical to traces collected from ancient ruins. Only one race is known to have this structure: the Protheans."

Garrus took a breath and checked the corner of his visor, ensuring he was still recording. _This changes everything. If the Reapers didn't wipe them out, everything we know is wrong!_ "My God," Shepard whispered. "The Protheans didn't vanish; they're just working for the Reapers now."

"These are no longer Protheans, Shepard," EDI told them. "Their genes show distinct signs of extensive genetic rewrite. The Reapers have repurposed them to suit their needs."

Shepard understood immediately and looked more clinically at the corpse on the table. "So they're like husks . . . or Keepers. You'd think somebody would've picked up on this."

"No one has had an opportunity to study a Collector genetic code in this detail," EDI corrected her. "I have already matched two thousand alleles to recorded fragments. This Collector likely descends from a Prothean colony in the Styx Theta cluster, but there are signs of extreme alteration. Three fewer chromosomes. Reduced heterochromatin structure. Elimination of superfluous gene sequences."

 _Modded and stripped down like weapons—no more than the Reapers need them to be. The Collectors are mutated tools—just tools. Hands and legs for whatever the Reapers are doing. And if the Collectors are comparing their genetic structure to humans—they're trying to figure out how humans work._

Garrus looked at Shepard, remembering Harbinger and its fixation on her back on Horizon. _Or how_ she _works._

Shepard's fingers skated over the corpse. Behind her visor, Garrus saw a trace of pity on her face. "The Reapers didn't wipe out the Protheans. They turned them into monsters and enslaved them. Still. They're working for the Reapers now, and we have to stop them."

Lawson squared her shoulders. "They're not doing to us what they did to the Protheans!" she declared.

Shepard looked at her with an unreadable expression and didn't say anything. Beside the lab station, there were three partially disassembled weapons—human weapons the Collectors had probably picked up from a colony somewhere. The best ones. With a pang, Garrus recognized a Revenant. There was a monster shotgun, similar to the one they'd requisitioned for Grunt on Illium—and—

"What is _that_?"

Shepard picked it up—a long, mean, black rifle as big as a rocket launcher folded up. Heavy, from the way she moved her arms. She reassembled the parts in about three seconds and sighted down the scope.

"Is that a Widow?" Garrus demanded. It was a turian anti-materiel weapon—a tank-killer, a gun that could take down a krogan warlord in a single shot. A kick like a son of a bitch, humans couldn't even fire them. Not enough protection on the shoulder, and a turian who didn't know what they were doing could still shatter or dislocate something. But this one was smaller. Shock resistance built into the stock. Some mad genius had tried to adapt the gun for human use, maybe asari. "Will it even work?" he wondered.

Shepard smirked. "I can't wait to find out."

 _Spirits._ Garrus swallowed and started to sequence in his head. _1\. 1. 2. 3. 5. 8. 13._

He registered Shepard's order to move out and followed after her, continuing the sequence in his mind and looking everywhere but at Shepard's six and that enormous, impossible gun in her arms. At the disquieting walkways, the cavernous interior of the ship. _610\. 987. 1,597. 2,584._

Then they passed out from under a ledge above them, the ceiling came into focus, and he didn't need another distraction. The entire interior of the ship was honeycombed with the pods they'd seen on Horizon. "Look on the ceiling. More of those strange pods."

"There must be hundreds of them," Miranda murmured. "How many do you think are full?"

"Too many," Shepard muttered.

"I detect no signs of life in the pods, Shepard," EDI said over the radio. "It is probable the victims inside died when the ship lost primary power."

It made sense. No nutrients. No air. But hundreds of people starving or suffocating above—it was unimaginable. Garrus zoomed on the pods, going over row after row for the vid, capturing the scope of it. People had to know what was happening out here _. The Reapers aren't a ghost story anymore. People are dying. Hundreds. More._

The weight of the death overhead pressed down on them even in the light, artificial gravity of the disabled ship, and the three of them walked on in silence. Lawson captured intel from another data node for the professor.

The walkway was climbing up again, making for some kind of command center, a place where a couple of paths converged, when Joker spoke over the radio. He sounded excited. "Commander, you gotta hear this," he said. "On a hunch, I asked EDI to run an analysis on this ship."

"I compared the EM profile against data recorded by the original _Normandy_ two years ago," EDI reported. "They are an exact match."

It was like a cold wind had blown over all three of them. Lawson tensed. Shepard's rhythm slowed for half a beat. _This is the ship that spaced her_. _They went after Alenko on Horizon, called her name when she fought. And now it's just empty, abandoned?_

"This same ship dogging me for two years?" Shepard repeated. She shook her head. "Way beyond coincidence."

"Something doesn't add up, Commander," Joker warned. "Watch your back."

"Be ready to bug out in a second when I give the word," Shepard told him. She pressed a button on her omni-tool. "Niels. Stand by."

"Affirmative. I'm ready."

The channel flicked off, and they continued toward the center of the vessel. Beneath them, Garrus could see more pods, and he nodded for the others to take a look. "This is unbelievable."

Lawson stared. Blue sparks danced at the edges of her fingertips. "They could take every human in the Terminus systems and not have enough to fill these pods." Her voice shook.

The conclusion was less of a jump and more of a step away. "They're going to target Earth." It had taken the Reapers all of two years to come up with a Plan B to jumping straight through the relays to the Citadel: this was it. _The Collectors are the vanguard for the Reapers, and it's already started. And if Shepard slowed them down, she also refocused their attention squarely on the humans. The Reapers will hit Earth first and hardest, because the fact that there could be more like_ her _scares them out of their synthetic minds._

"Not if we stop them," Shepard muttered. _We'll take the Collectors out if it kills us_ , Garrus thought. _She'll make sure of it, but before we do, this has to get to the Council, to the Hierarchy, the Alliance. We have to be ready._

Without anyone ordering it, they'd picked up the pace, making for the command center, like a knot in the center of the empty space of the cruiser. For the first time, Garrus noticed a series of platforms hanging in midair—mobile perches for the flying Collectors, he guessed. He zoomed in on them with his visor camera. He'd noticed they hadn't flown for long distances back on Horizon; this seemed confirmation. They weren't endurance fliers. Couldn't hover, which limited the damage they could do from overhead—by time, at least.

One of the platforms in the center of the ship, currently attached to the walkway they were on, had a blinking console in the center. "There: on the platform," Garrus told the others. "Looks like some kind of control panel."

Lawson kept rotating, covering all sides as they walked down the path. "Where are the bodies of the Collector crew?" she asked. "Aside from the corpse at the lab station, we haven't seen any. Careful, Shepard. Something doesn't feel right about this."

Shepard jerked her head in acknowledgment and walked up to the console. She activated her omni-tool. "EDI, I'm setting up a bridge between you and the Collector ship," she said. "See what you can get from its data banks, and we'll get out of here."

"Data mine in progress," EDI said coolly.

There was a noise over the radio. An alarm started blaring through the Collector ship, and beneath their feet, the platform started moving. Garrus windmilled, trying to keep his balance as Shepard and Lawson grabbed the console and the platform began to move of its own accord deeper into the ship on some preprogrammed flight pattern. "That can't be good," Joker said over the radio, then the feed flickered out into static, and Garrus knew the trap had been triggered back on the _Normandy_ too.

In the cavernous shadows of the interior of the Collector cruiser, Garrus saw movement on the walls as amber pods they'd assumed were empty or full of dead humans opened. Garrus pulled up targeting and checked the armor penetration ammo on his rifle as their platform stopped in the middle of the cruiser—away from any of the walkways.

 _Crap._

The radio flickered back on. "Commander!" Joker was shouting. "Commander! Can you read?"

"Everyone's alright, Lieutenant. What just happened?" Shepard said. Her voice was calm, even as she checked the tech panel on the Widow, shook her head, clipped it to the back of her armor, and pulled out her Locust. None of them knew how many were coming. She crouched down behind the console. Garrus took up position on her left as Lawson did the same on her right, guns facing out.

"Major power surge," Joker reported. "Everything went dark, but we're back up now."

"I managed to divert the majority of the overload to noncritical systems," EDI told them. "Shepard, it was not a malfunction. This was a trap."

In the shadows, Garrus saw other platforms like theirs lining up on the walls. Collectors were flying down from their hiding places to land on them. The first two platforms glided across the void. Five, maybe seven of them. "You don't say," Shepard said drily, looking off the edge of their platform.

It was no good, Garrus knew already. They were hovering in the middle of the empty space of the cruiser, far from the paths on the sides, at least twenty-five meters from the bottom, maybe more. _Without jets or drag-reducing equipment, there's no way._ Their only chance was for EDI to figure out the Collector tech and get their platform back to the the pathways.

Shepard had come to the same conclusion. "We need a little help here, EDI."

"I am having trouble maintaining connection. There is someone else in the system," EDI said, sounding fairly distracted.

"Great," Lawson muttered. "I'm not dying here!"

"No one's dying," Garrus told her, hoping very much it was the truth.

"Connection reestablished," EDI said. "I must finish the download before I can override any systems."

The platforms had reached them. "Look out. We've got company," Garrus warned.

"Of course we do," Shepard sighed. "EDI, work fast," she ordered, as the gunfire began.

It had been a well-structured trap, but the hover-platforms seemed to run on preset trajectories, and it was working in their favor, because instead of coming in on either side of them to catch them in a sandwich of death, both incoming platforms docked ahead of them, forming a path that led off at an angle on either side. The Collectors were stationed behind consoles, and as Garrus watched, one of the ones on the left lit up with a yellow-orange energy field. "You cannot stop me," Harbinger intoned.

"Great," Shepard muttered. "This guy again."

"Is it—?" Miranda started.

"Yes. Primary target, whenever it shows up. It's a rallying point for the others, and aside from hurting like hell, I'm pretty sure the energy Harbinger's minions fire at us can speed up the indoctrination process. On me!"

As one, Shepard and Lawson stood up out of cover, hitting Harbinger's latest puppet with a double shot of biotics and inflammatory tech. Garrus sprayed the others with an arc of assault fire, providing cover as the puppet went up in a blazing violet column. Lawson kept her barrier up to keep firing as Shepard ducked down to let her shields recharge.

"Don't worry about crowd control!" Lawson called over the gunfire and alarms. "I've got it! Just kill the bastards!" She balled her left hand into a fist. On the right platform, a Collector drone was pulled off of his feet and floated horizontally in an arc in front of all the others. At least twenty enemy bullets perforated his corpse, and as Shepard faded out, Garrus switched to his rifle.

He switched on his infrared and lined up his first shot, watching the orange and red silhouette that was Beth Shepard vaulting over the console, up the step to the right, into the enemy. He took one shot, then another, with Lawson's SMG fire providing the melody to his percussion. On the right, two short bursts of fire were Shepard's counterpoint as she stole one of the enemy positions to flank them.

But two more platforms were incoming now, and there was still no exit. No way out. "EDI, get us out of here!" Shepard called. _Bang! Bang! Bang!_

Shepard somersaulted left as the viscous, plasma burst of the heavy husks they'd seen on Horizon hit next to her. Where the blasts hit, the platform bubbled and steamed. There were just two of these guys, but there wasn't a lot of room to maneuver, not enough ground to evade them like there'd been on Horizon.

"I am simultaneously fighting Collector firewalls in over eight thousand nodes," EDI said. "I am tasked to capacity." She sounded almost as stressed as they were. _Which is saying something_ , Garrus thought. By his side, Lawson was shooting at the three Collector drones still firing on them on the left. "Move!" he cried, as one of the heavies fired, forcing them from cover. He constructed a firing solution as he dove, took the shot. He blew off half the husk's face, and it roared and raised its gun again.

Then a deafening _crack!_ split the air, and Garrus saw the other husk's severed spine rip the rest of the way through the weapon on its back. Blood and bone exploded outward, and the other heavy fell to the ground, not so much a terrifying monster anymore as it was a wreck.

"Shit!" Shepard cried from the right. The drones and the other husk turned toward her. Garrus ejected his heat sink, loaded another shot, and fired, and the husk fell back off the edge of the platform and plummeted to the depths of the ship. _Crack!_ The ribs of one of the Collector drones burst through the hard chitin of its torso like paper. The hole in its chest was the approximate size of its entire head.

Garrus blinked, breathed, and hit the shields of one of the last two drones with a blinding overload. It flinched, and six bullets from Lawson's SMG put it down.

 _Crack!_ The head of the last Collector drone was simply gone, exoskeleton, brain, and all vaporized into a fine, yellow mist. In the shadows, Garrus's visor couldn't pick up any more platforms. There was still movement on the perimeter, on the walkways, but after forty-five seconds, Garrus decided the Collectors had probably run out of the platforms. _Doesn't mean there aren't heavies out there bringing in the rockets or a beam with a longer range. We should hurry._

"Well," he said as Shepard hopped back over to them. "I'd say the new gun works."

Shepard rolled her right shoulder. "I'd say so, but God! This thing kicks like a son of a bitch!"

"Shepard, you must manually reestablish my link to the command console," EDI informed them urgently.

Shepard nodded and brought up her omni-tool, and in five seconds, EDI reported she'd regained control, and their platform started moving again. Unfortunately, it seemed Garrus's theory about the platform trajectories was right, because it started moving perpendicular to their previous path, halfway across the ship from where they wanted to be—but they were headed toward the walkways again, and he guessed that was progress.

Shepard's mouth twisted, but she said, "I knew you wouldn't let us down, EDI."

"I always work at optimal capacity," EDI replied. She sounded proud. _Just how complex are her emotional subroutines?_ Garrus wondered. _She's alive. Fully self-aware, but she was scared back there. Worried about us—and not just because it's her job. They probably programmed her, shackled her to enjoy her work, but_ can _you program an AI to care about organic life?_

He decided to save the questions about the nature of their AI's programming for later. "Did you get what we needed?" Shepard asked.

"I found data that would help us successfully navigate the Omega-4 relay," EDI confirmed. "I also found the turian distress call that served as the lure for this trap. There is something unusual about the source."

Shepard shrugged. "Seems logical to me that they would have used the initial message as bait."

"No," EDI told them. "It is unusual because turian emergency channels have secondary encryption. It is corrupted in the message. It is not possible that the Illusive Man would believe the distress call was genuine."

Shepard paused as their platform docked to the pathway, and beside her, Lawson tensed. "Why?"

"I found the anomaly with Cerberus detection protocols. He wrote them," EDI explained.

Garrus grimaced. _Should write Dad about the Hierarchy encryption protocols_ , he decided. _Last thing we want is Cerberus tapping into all our channels, and if they've got it, someone else might too. Might be time to change things up._

"He knew it was a trap," Joker concluded. His voice was incredulous. "Why would he send us into a trap?"

Shepard squared her shoulders, stooped to the ground where a couple of heat sinks had fallen out of Collector weapons, and scooped them up. "We don't have time to throw blame around. We'll question him when we're out."

Garrus looked at her. "This is a bad time to become an optimist, Shepard." The Illusive Man had sent them in here blind. Why?

"No, the Commander is right," Miranda said, but her voice was shaking, and when Garrus looked at her, he saw her hands were too. "There must be some other explanation."

 _She sounds like a woman trying to convince herself more than us._

But Shepard was already striding forward. "I'm not convinced he wasn't running his own experiment on his own people," she said. "I just think we need to get out of here."

"Hey, guys, we got another problem!" Joker cried, suddenly panicked. "The Collector ship is powering up! You need to get out of there before their weapons come online. I'm not losing another _Normandy_!"

 _Yeah, that's the next move_ , Garrus thought. _Keep us from leaving. Can't trap us and take us out in the center of the ship, you shoot down the_ Normandy _and fly away, cutting us off from reinforcements. Then take your own sweet time hunting us down. We don't know the ship, we don't know the tech. We've got no food, and there's only so much ammo._

Shepard shifted from a quick stride to a steady, loping jog, and Garrus quickened his pace to match her. "I do not have full control of their systems," EDI warned them. "I will do what I can."

Shepard opened the channel. "Niels, send us the coordinates for shuttle extraction! Come on, let's move!"

* * *

 **A/N: Confound the rules of dramatics, sometimes the urgent crowds out the important. Actually, if you try to play the game as I've written here, you'll find you can't. Mr. Illusive will force you to go after the Collector ship sometime after picking Tali up but certainly before you can recruit Thane. I forget exactly when it happens, but I know it's impossible to play the game exactly like this. It just makes more sense this way.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMS**


	21. Know Your Enemy: And the Other

XXI

Know Your Enemy: And the Other

There was a ping on Garrus's visor as he received the coordinates Niels had sent them all—almost halfway down the ship. _Well, I've been needing some exercise._ He pounded after Shepard down the walkway. "Around the corner. Take the door on your right," EDI told them, and his body reacted before she'd finished speaking. The door opened automatically—the AI was in the system, helping them get out, fighting the Collectors' attempts to power up and attack the _Normandy_.

Garrus paused for a second to note that the shell of the ship was hollow—that there were rooms and paths around the vast interior they'd already seen. The room they were in was entirely closed off from the center of the ship, and there was only one way to go—down. They passed panels and conduits as they went, and even in their hurry, he saw Shepard's omni-tool flashing, capturing data and tech readouts for the professor to study after they escaped. _If we escape._

The corridor opened up, and Garrus dug his heels in to avoid crashing into Shepard as she came to a halt, left hand raised behind her. "Enemies!"

They were looking at some sort of work or control center, complete with a gallery off to the right where higher-ranking soldiers could watch the grunts, down where they were. Garrus sized up the layout in a moment. The Collectors were dug in with the high ground, up in the gallery and straight ahead down the corridor, but the honeycomb structures they seemed to favor provided cover. Shepard had stopped behind a console, there was a ridge to her right, and they weren't in the open.

But the enemy could see them. The shrieks of their beam weapons started up, a few staccato shots that indicated some of them had more conventional weapons. Garrus tried to count them, but they were in cover, too, and it was hard to tell how many there were. _We're outnumbered at least two-to-one. Maybe three-to-one._

But beside him, Lawson clenched a glowing fist and pulled it back, and a Collector soared over the room. Garrus punched two shots through its head and let the body crunch into the left wall. _We're not beaten yet._

Their position was no good, though. They had to stay low or risk the Collectors firing over their cover, and there was no leaving for a better position while the Collectors had them caught in a crossfire. Garrus glanced at Shepard and saw her jaw set behind her visor, her pistol held tightly in her hands for several quick, precision shots, and her omni-tool glowing.

It was stupid. Completely insane. The mass effect propulsion on Shepard's firing weapon would fritz out her tactical cloak and leave her wide open when she took her first shot, and behind the Collector line there were too many Collectors and there wasn't any of the cover they had here. It was also their only move if they didn't want to get caught up in a long, drawn-out firefight with the Collector ship powering up every second.

Shepard faded out, and Garrus's visor tracked her as she started sprinting. _Damn it._

"I need a barrier!" Garrus snapped at Lawson, switching his sniper out for his assault rifle and climbing to his feet. His plates itched as Lawson immediately complied. He opened fire in a wide arc, following his visor's targeting paths, drawn in dashed blue lines across his vision. He felt the particle beams and bullets hit Lawson's barrier as he drew Collector fire. In two seconds they would give. In five, his shields would go down, too. He hoped it'd be long enough.

Four pistol shots rang out in rapid succession, and a fifth Collector plunged over the railing of the gallery. He hit the ground with a sick thud. Garrus hit the ground with a little more control, his shields at 5 percent. Beside him, Lawson was pale, but when he looked at her, she smiled.

Shepard had the high ground now, and it was an entirely different battlefield. Garrus saw her crouch down and pull out that magnificent rifle, and it was on. They caught the Collectors in the crossfire the things had hoped to catch them in, and Garrus pressed forward with Lawson to tunnel their way out.

Harbinger seized control of two separate Collector drones before they escaped the room, but the Reaper's favorite party trick had a couple of down sides, Garrus thought as he shot down another burning shell. The energy signature when Harbinger seized control of a drone lit up the entire room—and the Reaper never shut up. Harbinger's minions threw scary, crackling, black mass effect fields, had tough barriers and armor, but as soon as the Reaper took them it painted a neon target on their foreheads, almost literally. And with every minion they took out, Harbinger got a little less terrifying.

 _But annoying your enemy can be useful too. I'd know._ Annoyed, they could get careless. Annoyed, they might forget about the drones trying to shoot Harbinger down. Annoyed, they could get stupid. It was a tactic Archangel had used often in the past. "Stay sharp," he warned. "We've made it mad. It doesn't get to make us stupid!"

Lawson nodded, and over her shoulder, Shepard held up the sign for 'understood.'

EDI's exit route took them to another room, another gallery and understructure—but this time the ship brought them out into the gallery. "I am opening a door on the far side of the room," she informed them. There was only one problem. The massive, Collector air-support monster hovering right in front of the open door.

"Look at the size of it!" Lawson cried. Raw fear ran thick through her voice. She hadn't been on Horizon.

"Keep it together, Lawson," Shepard ordered her. She nodded at the husks and drones trickling through the door underneath the monster. "Just keep _them_ off me. Let me worry about _that_."

Given an objective, combat was small. As long as you were able to forget the plasma beam zeroing in on your friend on the other side of the room, the electric explosions whenever she'd done a lot of damage but hadn't taken it out yet.

Garrus raised his assault rifle and focused on the husks—humans kidnapped from the colonies, already converted by the Reaper technology on this ship. The CAS plasma beam shrieked as it bore down on Shepard. He didn't look. If that thing was still shooting, so was she. He heard the cracks of her gun—that antimateriel rifle had to be the best protection against something like that.

He threw a husk over his shoulder and stomped it into the ground. Tech sparked and gray guts gushed over his boots and greaves. At his back, Lawson took four shots at a drone. "Why isn't it shooting at us?" she demanded. "It's just . . . chasing _her_!"

Overhead, there was a crackle, and small pieces of burnt-up tech fluttered to the ground. Garrus felt a grim sort of admiration for the self-destruct protocol of those things. The Collectors had left all their other technology out to be scanned, but they weren't taking the chance for Shepard to learn anything about those horrible fused husk destroyers.

"I think a lot of these things have priority targeting," he murmured to Lawson, nodding at Shepard and falling into line behind her again. "Shepard first."

Shepard rolled her shoulders and began jogging toward the exit, but the open door closed as they approached. "EDI, we got a problem here," she said.

"A temporary setback on Firewall 3217," EDI reported. "Rerouting commands to Firewall 716. I have successfully opened a door on the opposite wall. I will keep it open as long as I can."

She was still fighting the Collectors on the ship, trying to keep them from leaving. EDI was designed for cyberwarfare. Her job was to hack enemy systems, bring down security walls—vent airlocks, screw with gravity, and mine enemy data. Garrus had some idea of what Cerberus had spent to build her—it wasn't cheap to develop that kind of entity, under the noses of intersystemic AI regulation. You didn't risk it unless you were sure your AI would work. But EDI was up against Reaper technology—and they were completely dependant on her out here. _That's a comfortable feeling._

But the door was open, and the three of them ran through. Off the ledge ahead, Garrus could see the shimmer of the mass effect envelope surrounding the ship—a glimpse of a white _SR-2_ that was Niels, waiting for them. "Down there: That's where we came in!" But he could feel the engines of the Collector ship rumbling beneath his feet, and the shimmer of the mass effect envelope grew more visible as he looked at it—the Collectors were diverting more power to the shields, readying the ship for space flight. _We don't have much time._

"We must be getting close to the end," Miranda gasped.

"Don't say that!" Shepard snapped immediately, and as they rounded the corner, she groaned. "Tempting fate, Lawson! Tempting fate!"

Garrus chuckled through the burn in his chest as he saw another gallery, and no less than six Collectors waiting in it. The three of them dove down into a workpen by a terminal for cover. He saw Lawson's omni-tool flash over the terminal. "There's an alcove," Shepard said. "Just ahead. I'm going to flank,"

"Here we go again," Lawson muttered. Garrus saw the antihumidifiers kick on insider her helmet, and knew she had to be sweating hard. How much longer would her biotics work without caloric intake? Lawson was good, but he'd seen her limits. She wasn't any Jack or Samara. Sure enough, she didn't put up a barrier for him. She pulled out her pistol for accuracy and shot—two or three shots per target to get through barriers and armor, carefully calculating each one. Garrus used his sniper, deliberately taking out the Collectors closest together, the ones that would feel the next drone's blood splash on them, have to shove it off before moving on. He didn't know if Prothean husks could feel fear any more than human ones, but he noticed more of them started shooting at him, all the same.

He heard a triple bang around the corner. One of the Collector heavies had to be back there, on Shepard's flank, blocking their exit. She'd have to deal with it before she could be much help with the Collectors in the gallery. Garrus scooped up some abandoned heat sinks by the terminal. Lawson made the sign for charge, looking the question at him. He nodded. She signaled to let her take point—her barrier would give them another few seconds. Groaning, she built it up one more time, vaulted the pen, and ran up the ramp to the gallery.

Garrus followed in single file after her, letting Lawson take the fire. As they came up in the middle of the three surviving Collectors, Lawson let her barrier go in an explosion of biotic energy. It pulsed out like a wave. Garrus braced himself just in time, but the Collectors fell like bowling pins. Their feet scrabbled on the ground as they tried to climb to their feet—too late for two of them. Two heads caved in and fell back—but the third was already lighting up from within, rising above the gallery, much too close for comfort.

Harbinger's drone crackled with Reaper tech. Lawson rolled to the side, thrust her hands up—but she was tapped out, amp overheated, exhausted. Garrus fired—a concussive blast point blank. The only damage it did was to take down half the thing's barriers—but it did disrupt its attack. Lawson's SMG started up, firing six modded bullets a second at mass effect speeds at the at the thing. They evaporated on contact—but so did Harbinger's barriers, and Harbinger turned toward Lawson's prone form on the ground, raising its arm. "You will know pain!"

Garrus fired again, full power, just as a fireball arced over the gallery and into the back of Harbinger's head. The last drone self-destructed in an explosion of tech, just like the CAS vehicle. Garrus held out his hand to Miranda. She took it and climbed to her feet, and the two of them jogged down the ramp to meet Shepard.

"Cutting it pretty close there, Shepard," Garrus told her.

"Sorry about that," she shrugged, flashing him a smile behind her visor. "But you two had it handled."

Despite her smile, she was moving time-and-a-half toward the exit now, around the corner and down the ramp toward the shuttle, even before Joker came over the radio. "Uh, Commander, I hate to rush you, but those weapons are about to come online! You might want to double-time it. You know, so we can leave before they blow the _Normandy_ in half."

"Nag, nag," Shepard muttered. She caught sight of something ahead. "Great. Collectors sent us a send-off party!" She slung her rifle back behind her back and drew her SMG. Taking his cue from her, Garrus drew his assault rifle and prepared for melee combat as no fewer than eight husks came running at them, sparking and screaming, the sound lost so close to the breach in the ship.

Shepard impaled one on her omni-tool, sent a fireball bursting through it and threw it into another. Garrus fired bursts at the husks, first in one direction, then another, trying to break up the clump around her. "I can't get a clear shot!" Lawson cried. "Oh, damn it!" Then she was with them, kicking a husk off of his flank and shooting it between the eyes. Garrus broke the spine of another—the resulting shock short-circuited his shields, and he fell back, firing at a husk coming up on Shepard.

"Commander, is that you?" Niels asked over the radio. "Get in!"

Shepard waved them in front of her, "Go! Go! Go!" Garrus jumped first, turning around to fire at the husks still following behind them. He blew one's torso back off of its legs, which fell in different directions to the ground. Lawson leapt up next, and finally Shepard. She banged the door frame, and Niels hit the controls to close it.

"We're out of time, Commander. We have to go!" Joker cried.

"You heard the man! Niels, get us out of here and back on the _Normandy_! Move!"

"You got it, Commander!"

The _Normandy_ had already started moving when they flew into the bay. Alarms were blaring, reacting to the proximity of a hostile ship. As soon as the bay doors shut behind them, Garrus felt Joker activate the FTL drive, racing for the relay. The inertial dampeners couldn't quite handle the differences in velocity they'd gone through in the last few seconds, and Garrus's stomach roiled. But the commander had to be on the bridge in case it came to fighting, so Shepard was up and running before Niels even turned the shuttle engine off. Garrus glanced at Lawson, and the two of them ran out after her.

* * *

Everyone was quiet as the _Normandy_ flew out of the relay. The Collectors would be unable to follow them—but it had been close. And the Illusive Man had set them up.

"De-equip and hit the showers," Shepard ordered. "I want both of you, Mr. Taylor, and Dr. Solus at a strategy meeting in the briefing room in half an hour. We'll debrief and talk about what's next. But first, I'm going to have a little talk with the Illusive Man." She jerked her chin. "Dismissed." Then she walked away, heading for the elevator herself.

Garrus stayed back a moment. Lawson was staring at Joker's display as if she wasn't really seeing it. _Cerberus's bitch_ , Jack called her, and while Jack might not be the best judge of Miranda Lawson, she did have something of a point. Lawson was the longest-serving, most dedicated member of the organization on board the _Normandy_. After Nos Astra, Garrus had a bit more of an idea about her. She hadn't confided in him like Taylor or Shepard, but he'd seen enough. Lawson had grown up in a gilded cage, her every move—and a few other things—dictated by a controlling father richer than half the galaxy. She'd taken one of the only routes available to her to get out. Cerberus hadn't just been her escape. Ever since the day she'd left her father, they'd been her sanctuary. And—probably because of the connections and talents she'd built with her father—she'd been a high-value asset to Cerberus ever since. Lawson probably hadn't seen half of what really went on in the organization. The Illusive Man wanted to keep her happy and on the team. He'd manipulated her, just like he was trying to manipulate Shepard.

Until now, Miranda had bought it. She'd thought she was too important, too special to be used or played like anyone else. _Now she knows that's not true. Will it change anything?_

"Why would the Illusive Man do this?" Miranda murmured to herself.

Garrus watched her carefully. "I'm guessing that's what Shepard's going to ask him. It's never easy, is it? Finding out your superior's willing to risk more than you thought."

"Shepard and the _Normandy_ , everything and everyone onboard, are too high-value to risk losing on a reconnaissance mission. We should have been warned."

"Yeah, don't tell _us_ that," Joker said. "Those assholes would've blown up the _Normandy_. Again! And the Illusive Man just sent us at 'em. I mean, you guys got out of there, and I flew us out. But that's 'cause we're just that good. Any of us slipped up for a moment, bam! 'Sorry, you're gonna need another ragtag crew of rescuers, 'cause this one's toast.'"

Miranda blinked and stepped back. "He must have known we could handle it," she said. "Still—no. I'm sure he'll have an explanation for Shepard. I—we should get ready for the meeting."

She walked away, and Joker looked up at Garrus. "You know, maybe the Alliance tried to ground me for a while after Alchera. Maybe the Council has their heads up their asses. But both of them always let us know about potential mission dangers. This need-to-know basis shit—I need to know, you know?" He shook his head. "Glad you all got out of there."

"You played a part in that."

"Hell, yes, I did," Joker retorted. He smiled. "But still."

"See you around, Joker."

* * *

Garrus got to the briefing room five minutes early, but Shepard already there, showered, changed, and out of her meeting with the Illusive Man. Her single plait was still wet, but she looked professional as the business end of her new gun in the science uniform she always wore on duty.

Garrus remembered Chambers asking her one evening in the mess why she wore the same uniform every day when Cerberus had made three or four variations available to her. Shepard had smiled and made a joke about matching with the doc every day, but he'd known the real answer. The science uniform was the only uniform anyone on the ship had without a Cerberus logo—just an embroidered " _SR-2_."

She was quiet, standing at the head of the briefing table and clearly in no mood to chat. Taylor came, then Solus and Lawson walked in together—and then Shepard gave them the details.

EDI had analyzed the information they'd picked up on the Collector ship and determined the Collectors used a Reaper IFF to get safely through the Omega-4 relay to their home world or station, and the Illusive Man had found one for them on a dead Reaper out near Klendagon in the Century system. No fake distress signals this time—the Reaper had been drifting there for millennia, and only since Sovereign had anyone known what to look for.

Looking around the room, though, Garrus saw he wasn't the only one skeptical about this new mission. The Illusive Man had apparently been worried about an intelligence leak if he tipped them off about the trap, but only the professor was prepared to accept this. Miranda was pale. Every so often she drummed her fingers on the table, and Taylor's arms were folded.

"So the Illusive Man didn't sell us out. Could've fooled me," he muttered.

Mordin tilted his head and extended a hand in a shrug. "Lied to us. Used us. Needed access to the Collector data banks. Necessary risk," he reasoned.

"Sending us in, maybe," Garrus conceded. "Sending us in blind? No way."

"Not knowing all the risks jeopardized the mission," Shepard said definitively. "The Illusive Man tries something like that again, the Collectors will be the least of his problems." Lawson tensed, and Shepard glanced at her, but Miranda didn't say a word, and Shepard moved on. "EDI, are you sure this IFF is going to work?"

"My analysis is accurate, Shepard," the AI told them. "I have also determined the approximate location of the Collector homeworld based on navigational data from their vessel."

A holo of the galaxy map popped up in the center of the conference table, and blue crosshairs drifted over the map to land squarely in the center of the galactic core. _Well. I wish I could say that doesn't make sense._

But Miranda narrowed her eyes at the map. "That can't be right."

Shepard gripped the edge of the table in both hands. He could see his own thoughts on her face. _Forget how we get back. How the hell are we even going to get in to take these bastards out?_ "EDI doesn't make mistakes. The Collector homeworld is located somewhere in the galactic core."

"I guess now we know why no one's ever survived going there," Garrus joked. He looked around at the others. It wasn't funny.

Taylor was still staring at the map. "The core's just black holes and exploding suns. There are no habitable planets there."

Across the room, Mordin's mind was already working on the problem. He paced the room, hypothesizing aloud. "Could be artificial construction. Space station protected by powerful mass effect fields and radiation shields." His omni-tool came out, and his fingers started flying over the keys, taking notes.

"Even the Collectors don't have that kind of technology," Lawson argued.

Shepard looked at her. "We've learned the Collectors are Prothean husks, working for the Reapers. We all know what the Reapers are capable of. They built the mass relays and the Citadel. Who's to say they can't build a space station surrounded by black holes?"

"The logical conclusion is that a small safe zone exists on the far side of the relay, a region where ships can survive," EDI told them. "As Officer Vakarian suggests, standard transit protocols would not allow safe transport. Drift of several thousand kilometers is common and would be fatal in the galactic core. The Reaper IFF must trigger the relay to ignore standard protocols."

Shepard was quiet for a moment. "Just because we can follow the Collectors through the relay doesn't mean we can take them out. I don't want to go after them until I know we're ready."

Taylor frowned. "Sooner or later we need that IFF. I say, 'why wait?'"

"It's a derelict Reaper," Lawson pointed out. "What if the Collectors are waiting for us?"

Shepard tapped her fingers on the table, considering. Garrus saw her look at Lawson, the professor, Taylor. Her eyes landed on him last. She shook her head. "The more people we have completely committed to the mission, the better our chances of success. We need to keep building up the team."

Garrus thought about how the room looked from her perspective. The Collectors had drawn them out today, but the minute they went after that IFF, they were done playing defense. They wouldn't be trying to catch up to the Collectors on a colony world or trying to escape a trap. They'd be making their first attack. _Sovereign had technology like no one had ever seen before_. _The Illusive Man says this Reaper's dead, but we also know we can't trust him. We have to assume the minute we board that Reaper, the Collectors will know we're coming for them._

 _We're outmanned and outgunned, and this is probably a suicide mission. But if it's a suicide mission, it had better work. No one's going to get another chance._

Their best asset against the Collectors was the people on the ship—a team that could defy any odds and end every last one of the bastards. _And we're not ready._ Garrus could see it right here. _Taylor's too angry—too ready to jump in head first. He's not fighting the Collectors; he's fighting something else. Something personal. The professor's too quiet, staring at Shepard. He's waiting on something. And Lawson—she's still trying to make up her mind about who and what she's fighting for._

There were wider issues in the crew. Tali had signed on to run from the quarian admiralty board. Grunt was having some sort of krogan health problem, maybe related to being grown in a tank. No one really knew Thane or Samara yet, and none of them worked as smoothly together as they should.

 _And you know you're not ready to jump off the ledge either_ , a small, malicious voice in the back of his head whispered. _You know you're looking at the beginning of the end of the cycle, that if the Collectors aren't stopped, the Reapers keep coming, and the entirety of civilization goes down in flames. But all those corpses in the hall, all the pods those bastards will fill with first the population of Earth than every planet or station in the sky don't mean as much to you as the fact that Lantar Sidonis is still breathing on the Citadel._

Garrus bowed his head. Beside him, he felt his hands clench into fists. If they wanted to do this right, holding off on the attack was the right call. He knew that. _But damn, the fact she has to make it . . ._

Taylor wasn't happy. "It's your call, Commander," he said. "Whatever you decide, we're with you."

Garrus glanced up at Taylor, frowning, and he wasn't the only one. Shepard was staring levelly at him, too. Ignoring her stated decision wasn't the subtlest way of saying he still disagreed. Taylor dropped his eyes and nodded, but Shepard kept looking at him when she said, "Dismissed."

Garrus felt like someone should probably talk to Taylor, but he couldn't do it. Not today. Without thinking about it, his eye flicked over to his vid archive and began replaying the footage from the Collector ship, fast forwarding and rewinding through it. He didn't bother syncing it up to his radio. He didn't need to. There was the Reaper, Harbinger, coming at them again and again. There was the pile of rotting, human corpses, kidnapped from Horizon or Freedom's Progress or any of the other half dozen colonies the Collectors had hit, subjected to horrific failed experiments—that would have only been worse if they'd succeeded. There was the Collector on the slab, a mockery of the last race the Reapers had wiped out.

But there was another vid playing in his head, and he couldn't shut it off no matter how many times he watched this one. Butler, looking up at him and seeing Nalah, bleeding out from so many bullet wounds it had been impossible to tell which had killed him. Vortash, fading away up in the loft. All of Omega's bile rolling across that bridge toward him—and Sidonis, flying away from it all.

Garrus's throat was dry, his chest was tight, and it felt like someone had been tying knots in his intestines. _This is where duty fights duty, and I don't know what's right_. _I just don't know._

* * *

 **A/N: So you get a Wednesday update today, because I feel just terrible. Some of you know I was recently promoted and have been a lot busier at work and more tired when I get home, but the truth of it is that for a while, I just burned out. Combat chapters are never very easy for me, and after Illium, hitting this, I just had to take a break. I had most of this written for weeks, but it took me ages to get through the combat section, and I'm still not thrilled with the result.**

 **I hope that things will pick up a little now, but the way my life is just now, I'm not going to make you any promises. Just know I'm working on it. I have not abandoned this story, and I will update when I can.**

 **Apologies,**

 **LMSharp**


	22. A Question of Loyalty: Flotilla

XXII

A Question of Loyalty: Flotilla

Garrus's omni-tool buzzed toward the end of _Normandy_ 's night cycle. Shepard had sent them through the star system again, scanning for resources Solus and Taylor could use to upgrade the ship and everybody's weapons tech. The relief pilot was flying the ship, and the graveyard shift workers were working the scanners and the probe bay.

Garrus woke up disoriented. He'd had trouble falling asleep after their escape from the Collector ship, but absolute exhaustion could only be ignored for so long before it took over, and he hadn't popped a stim since Omega. He sat up in the battery, lights powered down for the night. His eyes burned, but that was just typical. He rubbed them, blinked, and looked down at his 'tool. There were only three people it would have woken him for.

Garrus flipped open the trunk by his cot and grabbed his visor. He clipped it on, powering it up. It connected to his omni-tool immediately. A video-chat invitation blinked on his interface. He hit the button to reject the call but went ahead and opened a real-time chat connection.

 **It's 0430 here, Sol, and we're at FTL again. What do you need?**

Her answer came in less than a minute. **0430? About time to get up anyway, then, isn't it?**

 **Not after yesterday it's not** , he typed.

 **Bad day?** came the reply.

 **I've had worse. What's going on?**

There was silence for a moment. Then, **Mom forgot where she was standing today and fell down the front stairs.**

Garrus sighed. **Is she all right?** Solana would have told him immediately if there'd been an emergency, he knew. That didn't mean everything was fine. Garrus fought to smother the flicker of frustration he felt. _We don't have time to deal with this. I don't have time to deal with it. But it's not Mom's fault she's sick, and it's not Solana's fault either. And it's happening._ He swallowed and closed his eyes until his omni-tool buzzed again.

 **Mild concussion. She'll be fine. Aside from the Corpalis. It's getting worse. Not that you care.**

Garrus stood up and went to the battery console. He flipped on the battery lights and started up the calibration sequence. Then he typed a response. **That's not fair.**

The power draw had got a little out of hand during the night shift, so Garrus made a couple of corrections so Donnelly wouldn't be chewing him out later for leaving the cooling systems or the computation grid vulnerable. He started a simulation to judge the state of the targeting systems. Then Solana's reply came in. **None of this shit is fair. I'm sorry. It's good to hear from you. I'm worried about you too, you know.**

His omni-tool buzzed again. **The vids are starting to come out, you know. No one took the viral vid those kids made about Zombie Shepard seriously, but now there's four more. They're crap. I saw about twenty minutes each of two of them and nearly laughed my ass off, but people are starting to talk. Somehow everyone's got this idea that your Commander Shepard is back from the dead. Working for Cerberus.**

Garrus stared down at the glowing message. Some of the highest-ranking admirals in the Hierarchy could walk down the Presidium without turning a single alien head. Soldiers, even heroes, weren't usually celebrities to anyone but their own kind. But Shepard had started out different. Ever since Akuze, she'd been getting everyone's attention. After she'd become the first human Spectre and saved the Citadel from Saren's attack, she was probably more famous than the most popular human actors, businesspeople, and politicians—on Earth, Arcturus, or the Citadel.

The rumors had probably been inevitable. It didn't really matter who'd started them—a dancer on Omega, an escaped merc or Purgatory inmate, a lower-level Cerberus or Alliance operative, even, out to impress a date. _I'll bet the Council's thrilled. They won't have to lift a finger to attack her after this. The story practically spins itself. They can let it run, and they won't have to defend ignoring the Reapers. Cerberus has made its reputation. And it's more or less deserved._

Garrus looked at the readout from the simulation and selected one of his custom-built calibration sequences. Then he turned around to make up his cot. Shepard usually stayed in the front of the battery on her rounds, but Lawson did occasionally try to catch him out of order—more to keep him on his toes now than out of any resentment, he thought. Once he was satisfied the creases would pass inspection, he brought up his omni-tool to reply. **You shouldn't get your news from crap vids. You should know to wait for the official report. Then you watch the decent channels for second- and third-hand interpretations, speculation, and gossip. Of course, even then, odds are you're being lied to, but at least it's a better lie.**

He'd have to set up an encrypted file for the Hierarchy, he realized. Send it to his father. _And hope he doesn't just shred it on principle. Burned my bridges on the Citadel, and no one else is waiting to hear from a dropout prospective Spectre._

 _But there's no guarantee I'll be making an official report in person._

When he got Solana's reply, it was acidic. **A lie's better than no information at all. G, tell me you're NOT "consulting" for undead, human supremacist terrorists while our mother's dying.**

The lump in his throat and the sick feeling in his chest were old friends by now. Garrus took a breath and swallowed. **I'm not consulting for an undead, human supremacist terrorist** , he replied, completely honestly. He didn't know what Shepard was since Alchera, but she definitely wasn't a zombie, and the idea that anyone who knew her could call her a human supremacist or a terrorist almost made him laugh. _But not in a funny way._ **I'm doing good work here, Solana. Trust me.**

She didn't reply for a moment. Then she said, **No one who's really trustworthy ever has to ask for it, G. Mom's up. I have to go. Don't die today, okay?**

 **Connection terminated** , his visor reported. Garrus tried to smile. She had been almost polite. _It doesn't make it any better._

It was still before 0530, so Rupert wasn't in the mess yet. There was a pot of asiita right next to the coffee on the burner that said someone that liked him was already up. He sniffed at it and guessed Doc Chakwas or Shepard had made the pot—Goto and Chambers had tried a few times, too, but they generally made the asiita too weak, while the one time he'd caught Jack at it, it'd been strong enough to peel paint. He still wasn't sure if it'd been an ironic prank or an awkward conciliatory gesture.

Garrus poured himself a cup and pulled a couple of synthesized protein blocks off of the dextro shelf in the pantry. It didn't take long to slice them up and fry them with a sauce he'd had Gardner requisition on Illium. It was still space junk, not half as good as a proper dextro meal on a hub world. There were supplies to cook one if he wanted. Garrus sighed. _So sue me. Junk's quicker._

He plated his breakfast and started scouring the pan before he ate when Shepard walked in. As he'd guessed, her hair was already pinned up and gelled down for a mission, though she was still in uniform. They were a couple of hours away from their destination, then. "Headed for the DMZ?" he asked.

She shook her head, walking around to join him, pouring a cup of coffee for herself and leaning against the counter. "Valhallan Threshold," she said.

"So in the exact opposite direction. Any reason why?" Garrus kept his voice casual. It was also in the exact opposite direction from the Citadel. He put the pan on the drying rack for Gardner, placed the sauce and protein packages back in the pantry, and grabbed his plate, asiita, and a utensil from the drawer.

Shepard walked with him back over to the mess tables and sat opposite him with her coffee. "It's at least two days and about three fuel stops closer than the DMZ," she replied. "And last night Tali got a notice from the Migrant Fleet. She's been accused of treason and summoned back for trial. If we don't get her there soon, they could try her in absentia."

Garrus blinked. " _Tali_ 's been accused of _treason_." The concepts seemed impossible to reconcile. Tali'Zorah vas _Neema_ cared more about her people than a lot of _turians_ he'd known cared about theirs. "What in the galaxy did she do?" A thought occurred to him, and anger flushed through him hot and fast. "It isn't because she's with us—"

Shepard was already shaking her head. "She got leave. I got a curt, irritated letter from her father a while ago approving it, with a none-too-subtle 'If anything happens to my little girl' threat included. The admiralty board hasn't told Tali what this is about. I hope Grunt can keep for a few hours, because if he can't, we'd be in trouble before we made it to Tuchanka anyway. I want to take care of this now."

Garrus hummed. "What are we doing about Grunt in the meantime?" In the intense agitation he called a 'blood haze' in his mind, the krogan had already cracked a window in the cargo hold. He'd been pacing and growling down there since Illium and was making everyone else almost as nervous as he was.

"I asked Taylor, Massani, and Samara to run target practice with him in the shuttle bay this morning. Jacob said they might play some two-a-side basketball after that. EDI will lock the bay down for the duration. Mordin is working with Dr. Chakwas to come up with a mild sedative—just enough to calm him down for the evening. If all goes well today, we'll be done here and on Tuchanka late tomorrow night." Shepard frowned and looked down at the table. It occurred to Garrus that sometimes he was really glad he wasn't in charge anymore.

"Taylor really thinks Samara will agree to play two-a-side basketball with our baby krogan?" Garrus asked her. Somehow, it didn't surprise him that Massani would. "And Niels is letting them all in the shuttle bay without throwing a fit?"

Shepard shrugged. "Samara's interested in learning human games, and with Taylor and Massani, there's a chance they can rein Grunt in if things get rough. As for the shuttle bay—it'd be hard for even Grunt to destroy the Kodiak." She met his eyes and the corner of her mouth quirked up. "And you like fixing the Hammerhead."

Garrus finished his breakfast. "Well. As long as we have a plan. But you think Grunt will agree to take a sedative Mordin made for him?"

"Okeer gave Grunt a lot of cultural memories, but he's got his own mind and his own interpretations of them," Shepard explained. "In his head, Mordin's part of my clan—not affiliated with the people that gave the krogan the genophage." Something flickered in her eyes for a moment—anger? Then it was gone, and she sighed. "More than anything, Grunt wants to be a soldier. He wants to keep whatever's going on under control."

Since this was in line with Garrus's own observations, he accepted it. He stood with his tray. Across the room, Gardner had begun preparing breakfast for the day shift. Garrus could hear the crew stirring in the barracks down the deck. He took his tray over to Gardner, who took it with a good morning and a smile. "You eaten yet, Commander?" he asked Shepard. "Grits and turkey bacon biscuits this morning—those new supplies from Illium are sure coming in handy."

"I had a bagel and an egg earlier, thanks, Rupert."

Gardner shook his head. "You two. Sometimes I wonder if you sleep. You take great care of us, Shepard. Make sure you take care of yourself, too, eh?"

Garrus took a look at Shepard's gelled hair again. "You going aboard the Migrant Fleet with Tali today?" he asked her.

"Maybe I can speak for her, I don't know," Shepard agreed. "Especially if whatever she's being accused of happened while she was with us."

"Mmm. Think she'd mind if I came along?"

Shepard looked up. "Why don't you ask her?" she suggested. Tali had just come on deck. She was walking toward them, too fast, wringing her hands nervously already. Shepard walked to her and drew her aside. "Hey, hey," she said softly, gripping Tali's shoulder. "Relax. It'll be fine."

"You can't say that, Shepard," Tali told her. "I've been accused of treason. That's not an accusation the admiralty board throws around lightly. How long until we arrive?"

Shepard checked her omni-tool. "Probably about three hours," she said.

"As soon as Joker brings us into the system, we'll need to call them to verify it isn't an attack," Tali said. "This ship is registered to Cerberus. Unless we tell them this is the _Normandy_ , they're likely to fire on us."

"Just another side benefit of working with the Illusive Man," Garrus joked. "Tali—Shepard told me what's happening. If you'd like me to be there for the hearing, I'm there."

"I appreciate that, Garrus," Tali said. "Your support means a lot."

"You should try to eat something," Garrus suggested. "It might help settle your nerves."

"Or give me something to vomit up," Tali retorted. "You don't know what nausea is like inside this suit. But I'll try."

* * *

Three hours later, Garrus met Tali and Shepard in the cockpit by the airlock. He wasn't surprised to see Shepard had armed up like he had—she never went anywhere without her guns. He was a little surprised that Tali had, and he wondered if the admiralty board would take her weapons before the trial. They were just coming out of the mass relay, and Garrus saw hundreds of yellow lights pop up on the display as the ladar registered ship emissions. Fighters, cruisers, ships the size of dreadnaughts—the quarian flotilla was a thing to see. He saw the digital signatures of ships centuries old, of ships made by every culture. The ships that looked like they had been originally turian, though, had been heavily modified since. Every ship in the fleet would be, he knew, adapted to serve the needs of a people that lived entirely in space.

"Look at 'em all," Joker breathed. "I mean, they tell you the quarians have the largest fleet in the galaxy, but _that_ —that's something else. Not sure a lot of them would be much good in a fight—but _still_!"

"Jeff, we're going to need you to hail the fleet," Shepard said calmly.

"Which ship?" Joker asked, opening up the communications panel.

"The liveship _Raaya_ ," Tali told him. "That's where the trial will be held."

"Got it."

A green light flicked on near the controls, a circular panel behind Joker's seat lit up with a faint, orange light, and Tali stepped onto it. Her image would be projected onto the _Raaya_ 's bridge when the ship accepted the call. "This is Tali'Zorah vas _Neema_ nar _Raaya_ , requesting permission to dock with the _Raaya_ ," she said.

A holoscreen came up in front of the window, and a quarian male responded. "Our system has your ship flagged as Cerberus. Verify," he said curtly.

"'After time adrift upon open stars, along tides of light, and through shoals of dust, I will return to where I began,'" Tali quoted.

On the screen, the quarian nodded. "Permission granted. Welcome home, Tali'Zorah."

"We'd like a security and quarantine team to meet us," Tali told him. "Our ship is not clean."

"Understood." A line rendering of the _Raaya_ appeared on the screen where the quarian had been, and a green port flashed, showing Joker where to go. "Approach Exterior Docking Cradle Seventeen."

The transmission ended, and Tali turned to Garrus and Shepard. "I'm sorry to have to ask you this, but you'll need to wear your helmets aboard the _Raaya_. Your germs could infect the sterile environment and endanger some of the citizens on board."

"It's no problem, Tali," Shepard said, already donning hers. Garrus followed suit.

"Thank you. And thank you both for coming. I—I appreciate it."

* * *

In addition to the usual sonic decontamination procedure in the airlock of the _Raaya_ , the quarian security and decontamination team instructed them to step one at a time into a special decontamination chamber off the corridor for a full rinse of their armor and equipment with multiple air and steam jets. They were then each given towels to completely dry their suits and armor while the team briefed them on the Fleet's hygiene protocols for visiting aliens.

As Tali said, they weren't to remove their helmets—or any piece of armor—unless they were taken to specifically designated, airlock-sealed, open-air rooms, which would be made available to them for toilet functions and in the event that their stay lasted overnight. They were asked for any rations or canteens they had brought aboard—the contents of which were disposed of in a bin out of the airlock. The team sterilized the containers and refilled their canteens with purified water. The team then wished them a pleasant visit and let them pass into the main body of the _Raaya_ —without taking their weapons.

Garrus stared as they walked into the ship proper. The _Raaya_ was incredible—the size of a military dreadnaught, but the entire ship was devoted to production of food for the Migrant Fleet. Ceilings were high and airy, the walls were decorated with colorful tapestries and murals, and the lights overhead were growlights, designed to grow plants in an artificial environment. More quarians than Garrus had ever seen together milled around in the halls in suits of all different colors, styles, and patterns. For the quarian people, this was the closest thing they had to a homeworld.

As amazing as it was, though, it was impossible to ignore the vibration of the engines underneath his feet, the cold emptiness of space outside of the windows, the confines of the walls. He enjoyed space travel—but imagining the restriction of it when a species had no choice made his plates itch. Told not to take it off, already his helmet felt hot and heavy.

 _But Tali's lived—will live—here her entire life. Or a place just like it._

A quarian was waiting for them in the corridor before the ship opened up to a common area. He shook Shepard's hand immediately. "Captain Shepard," he said. "My name is Kar'Danna, captain of the _Raaya_. Tali'Zorah told me a lot about you. I wish we could be meeting under more pleasant circumstances."

Shepard shifted. "Honestly, 'Shepard' is probably best," she told him. "I never reached the rank of captain, and technically I'm no longer in the Alliance military at all."

"You're the commander of the _Normandy_ , responsible for the lives aboard it," Captain Danna corrected her. "That entitles you to respect among our people. May you stand between your crew and harm as you lead them through the empty quarters of the stars."

" _Keelah se'lai_ ," Tali responded. "It's an old ship captain's blessing, Shepard," she explained.

Shepard bowed her head respectfully. "Tali's helped the _Normandy_ 's crew a great deal. I'm here to return the favor. This is our friend and colleague, Garrus Vakarian."

Captain Danna shook his hand as well. "Yes. You accompanied Captain Shepard and Tali'Zorah before. I've heard good things. Welcome." He turned to Shepard and Tali again. "As the commander of the vessel Tali serves on, your voice carries weight. I wish I could do more to help, Tali. The trial requires that I be officially neutral, but I'm here if you need to talk. They're charging you with bringing active geth into the fleet as part of a secret project."

Tali stepped back. "That's insane!" she cried. "I never brought active geth aboard! I only sent parts and pieces!"

Garrus checked. _She's been sending geth back to the Fleet?_ Shepard's helmet turned to Tali. Apparently, this was news to her as well. "You sent geth materials back to the Migrant Fleet." Her voice was unreadable.

"Yes," Tali confirmed. "My father was working on a project; he needed the materials." She looked at Captain Danna. "If I sent back something that was only damaged, not permanently inactive . . . No. No. No. I checked everything. I was careful."

Danna shifted. "Technically, I'm under orders to place Tali under arrest pending the hearing," he admitted uncomfortably. "So, Tali: you're confined to this ship until this trial is over."

Official instructions or not, it was clear the captain was on Tali's side. Looking side to side, the only guards Garrus saw were on the airlock. If Tali could go anywhere onboard, she was hardly under arrest at all. Danna trusted her. Tali bowed her head. "Thank you, Captain."

"Preparations got underway as soon as you arrived," Danna told them. "The hearing is being held in the garden plaza. Good luck."

"Geth?" Garrus asked under his breath as Tali led them onward.

Tali was defensive. "You know my people have an interest in the geth," she said. "I'm a loyal citizen of the Migrant Fleet. When my government asked me to do field research on the enemy, I complied. But they're accusing me of endangering the fleet! I don't know—"

She paused, seeing another quarian, this one female in a black suit with elaborate silver stitching. This woman opened her arms. "Tali'Zorah vas _Normandy_ ," she said in an older-sounding, accented contralto even lower than Shepard's. Garrus frowned, but Tali ran to her, hugging her warmly. "I am glad you came. I could delay them only so long."

"Auntie Raan!" Tali said fondly. She drew back from the older woman. "Captain Beth'Shepard vas _Normandy_ , Garrus'Vakarian vas Palaven, this is Admiral Shala'Raan vas _Tombay_. She's a friend of my father's." Then it hit her, and she faltered. "Wait, Raan . . ."she said, and the hurt in her voice sent a stab of sympathy through Garrus. "You called me vas _Normandy_."

"I'm afraid I did, Tali," Admiral Raan said quietly. "The admiralty board moved to have you tried under that name, given your departure from the _Neema_."

Shepard stepped forward, folding her arms. "I take it being associated with a human ship is a bad sign?"

Tali was furious. "They stripped me of my ship name! That's as good as declaring me exiled already," she cried.

Shala'Raan shook her head. "It's not over yet, Tali. You have friends who still know you as Tali'Zorah vas _Neema_ , whatever we must call you legally."

"You're an admiral," Shepard noted. "Does that mean you're one of the judges?"

"I'm afraid not," Raan told them. "My history with Tali and her father forced me to recuse myself."

Garrus guessed she would have had to. Quarians were only permitted to have one child, except during times of serious population decline, but Tali was close enough to Raan to call her aunt. Tali was grim. "I imagine father had to do the same."

Shala'Raan shifted, and the bad feeling Garrus had had since he'd heard 'vas _Normandy_ ' got worse. "You'll see inside, Tali," she said. She looked at Shepard. "For my part, I moderate and ensure that the rules of protocol are followed, but I have no vote in the judgment."

"I guess we should get started," Shepard said. "Does Tali have a defense counselor? Someone who speaks for her side?"

"Indeed she does, Captain Shepard," Raan confirmed. "She is a part of your crew now, recognized by quarian law. And remember: an accused is always represented by his or her ship's captain."

 _This gets better and better._ Danna and Raan had been very deliberate in calling her 'Captain Shepard,' Garrus realized. It was the role she'd play in this trial, completely unprepared. _They've stacked the deck against Tali every way they can, haven't they?_

"I see," Shepard said in her driest tone. "So that's me. And here I haven't done my reading on quarian law." She reached out and gripped Tali's shoulder. "Tali—I'll do everything I can."

Tali gripped her arm. "Thank you, Shepard. I could not ask for a better advocate."

 _Someone who believes in her, someone to fight for her? Maybe not. But if I were her, I might want a quarian lawyer_ , Garrus thought. He didn't say so. Most situations only needed so much pessimism, and the way things looked for Tali now, he didn't blame her for trying to be as positive as she could.

But Shala'Raan told them not to worry about the law. "Our legal rules are simple," she said. "There are no legal tricks or political loopholes for you to worry about. Present the truth as best ye can. It will have to be enough. Now come. I promised that I would not delay you."

The garden plaza was laid out amphitheatre-style, with long, curved benches facing a dais, surrounded by planters that held small trees and hedges. There was an aisle down the center of the benches, and in the middle of the aisle, someone had set up a podium where Shepard and Tali were obviously meant to stand. Shala'Raan directed them to it and told Garrus to sit in the gallery. Quarian civilians, some talking about the other ships they came from, filed in and sat around, while the admiral made her way to the center of the dais. She would be the judge—but this trial would be decided only by the members of the admiralty board that had not recused themselves—the three quarians sitting behind the dais on either side of Admiral Raan.

The murmuring in the gallery grew to a dull roar before Raan brought up her hands to quiet everyone. "This conclave is brought to order," she said, her voice carrying through the garden plaza and echoing off the high ceiling of the room. "Blessed are the ancestors who kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season. _Keelah se'lai._ "

" _Keelah se'lai_ ," the quarians around the room intoned.

"The accused, Tali'Zorah vas _Normandy_ , has come with her captain to defend herself against the charge of treason."

"Objection!" one of the males on the board cried. He wore a white suit with dull red accents, and his voice was strong and clear, if a bit nasal. "A human has no business at a hearing involving such sensitive military matters!"

"Then you should not have declared Tali crew of the _Normandy_ , Admiral Koris," Raan retorted. "By right as Tali's captain, Shepard must stay."

Garrus could see Koris thinking. Raan would uphold Tali's rights—he couldn't leave Tali without any advocate. _So what's more important?_ Garrus wondered. _The security of the quarian military or the politics of leaving Tali without a quarian defender?_ If this hearing touched on quarian military secrets, any military officer worth a damn would immediately reinstate Tali's ship name, bring the captain of the _Neema_ up to the dais, and dismiss Shepard and Garrus from the trial. But—

"Objection withdrawn," Koris said finally, subdued. _Bastard,_ Garrus thought.

"Beth'Shepard vas _Normandy_ ," Raan said, running Shepard's first and last names together in the quarian custom. "Your crew member Tali'Zorah stands accused of treason. Will you speak for her?"

Shepard's back was to Garrus, her head hidden in her helmet, and Garrus realized once again how much of communication was nonverbal. Tali exaggerated her cues, moving her arms, walking around, and modulating her voice to get her point across. In this environment, Shepard was boxing at a disadvantage against more than a law she was unfamiliar with. _She's not used to giving speeches in full armor. Will she be able to persuade a quarian audience at all?_

He saw her take a breath, push her shoulders back, and raise her head. Her arms came up, and Garrus knew she wasn't going to have a problem. "If it helps Tali, I will," she said, projecting her tone like Raan through the space. "But in her heart, she remains Tali'Zorah vas _Neema_ , a proud member of the Migrant Fleet. I regret that her captain is forbidden to stand at her side today."

Koris flared up again. "Nobody has been forbidden from anything! It is a simple—"

The other male on the board, also dressed in white, but with light brown accents, interrupted with a sweep of his arm. "Lie to them if you must, Zal'Koris," he cried in a sharp baritone, "but don't lie to me and expect me to stay silent! The human is right!"

Raan raised a hand. "Admirals, please! Shepard's willingness to represent Tali'Zorah in this hearing is officiated." She looked at Tali. "Tali, you are accused of bringing active geth to the Migrant Fleet. What say you?"

"Tali is innocent of the charge," Shepard said firmly.

Tali wrung her hands, but spoke up to clarify. _Quarians—fairly informal in court_ , Garrus noted _._ "I would never send active geth to the fleet. I sent parts and pieces to aid my father's research, but everything I sent was disabled and harmless."

Koris leaned forward. "Then explain how geth seized the lab ship where your father was working," he said in a nasty tone.

Tali stepped back. "What are you talking about?" she gasped. "What happened?!"

"As far as we can tell, Tali, the geth have killed everyone on the _Alarei_ ," the other man said in a gentler voice. "Your father included."

Garrus wanted to stand up, and Shepard wrapped an arm around Tali as she reeled. "What? Oh, _Keelah_!"

Shepard squeezed Tali's shoulder and addressed the board. "I appreciate the need for this trial, admirals, but right now our first concern must be the safety of the Migrant Fleet. The _Normandy_ stands ready to assist in whatever capacity necessary."

Raan nodded gravely. "Thank you. Quarian strike teams have attempted to retake the ship, so far without success."

Tali turned to Shepard, clasping her hands in front of her. "Shepard, we have to take back the _Alarei_!" Her voice was desperate, and Garrus was suddenly very glad Shepard never went anywhere without her guns.

"The safest course would be to simply destroy the ship," Koris said, and his voice turned down into a sneer once again, "but if you are looking for an honorable death instead of exile—"

Tali threw off Shepard's arm and stepped forward, jabbing a finger at the admiral. "I'm looking for my father, you _bosh'tet_!"

The gallery exploded with murmurs and recriminations. Raan called for order again and stared at Tali. "You intend to retake the _Alarei_ from the geth? This proposal is extremely dangerous," she warned them.

Now Garrus did stand and walked over to stand beside Tali and Shepard. It was time to show the quarians the two of them weren't alone. Shepard gave him the slightest nod, but she replied to the board. "With your permission, admirals, yes. The good of the fleet must come first, and Tali needs to find her father."

The milder man looked across Raan to the female sitting on her other side, like Raan, dressed in black, but with white accents. She had yet to speak, but she clasped her hands in front of her visor in an anticipatory posture and nodded at her fellow admiral. "Agreed," the man said. "And if you die on this worthy mission, Tali, we will see that your name is cleared of these charges."

Koris tensed. "We can discuss that later," he said in an undertone. _He's sold on convicting—but why?_

Raan laid her hands flat on the top of her podium. "Then it is decided. You will attempt to retake the _Alarei_. You are hereby given leave to depart the _Raaya_. A shuttle will be waiting at a secondary docking hangar. Be safe, Tali. This hearing will resume upon your return or upon determination that you have been killed in action." She made a gesture, apparently dismissing the gallery, and everyone started talking at once.

Garrus followed Tali and Shepard a little ways away from their podium. Tali gripped Shepard's arm. "Thank you for agreeing to take back the _Alarei_ , Shepard," she said. "The admirals sound sure that my father is already dead, but . . . I don't know. We won't know anything until we get there." She turned to him, bouncing on her toes nervously. "Garrus, will you—"

He cut her off. "I'm there."

She sighed in relief and released Shepard to clasp his arm as well. "Thank you. You are the best friends anyone could ever ask for."

"We're here for you, Tali," Shepard assured her. "How are you holding up? They just threw a lot of fire at you, even before telling you about your father."

Tali hesitated. "I knew this would be bad, but I guess you're never really prepared to be charged with treason," she admitted. Worry was thick in her voice. "And my father . . . I don't know. He . . . he could still be alive. They don't know for certain that he's dead. I just don't know, Shepard, and I need to find out."

Shepard nodded. "Is there anyone here you want to talk to before we go?"

"It might be a good idea," Garrus observed. "All respect to Admiral Raan, but I could hear the politics back there. This might not be as simple as it seems."

Tali shifted. "It might help us to see what their viewpoints are, but I doubt we'll change anyone's mind by talking to them privately," she said.

Shepard nodded decisively. "Let's go."

"Let's hurry," Tali implored her. "The sooner we get to the _Alarei_ , the sooner we'll know what happened."

EDI spoke over their radio. "Shepard, the secondary docking hangar is through the conclave chamber where you are now. The shuttle they have provided is unarmed."

"Understood," Shepard said.

"Whatever geth are on the _Alarei_ have likely built more of themselves. Expect heavy resistance," EDI warned. Garrus wondered if the quarians knew there was another AI in their system, and he sighed.

"Why is nothing ever easy?"

* * *

Garrus let Shepard and Tali handle talking to the admirals. He hung back and observed the crowd in the plaza. It would be useful to know what most of the citizens thought of her. The geth were a big deal anyway, but to the quarians—well. The geth had killed 90 percent of their population and driven them off every planet they held three hundred years ago. Allowing the enemy into this very fragile environment was probably the worst thing any quarian could be accused of—even if it had been unintentional.

Listening to the people talking, Garrus heard a lot of debate about Tali's guilt—but almost unanimous approval of Shepard's approach to the defense. Tali seemed to be well-liked here. For all the severity of her charges, most of the quarians around seemed to feel Koris was being overly antagonistic to a prominent and previously blameless member of the Fleet. A few had come from other ships to speak for her.

One of them was the marine they had met on Haestrom, Kal'Reegar. Shepard greeted him with considerable warmth, for her, unmistakably relieved to learn he'd survived his injuries there. He'd made a good impression that day. "How have you been, Reegar?" Shepard asked. "You took kind of a beating on Haestrom."

Reegar shrugged. "Physical damage wasn't bad. I was down for about a week with infection, though." He looked at Tali. "Figure I got off easy. I don't have to face those admirals."

"With your immune systems, it couldn't be easy for quarians to fight a war," Shepard observed. "You'd lose more people to infection than injury."

"We can't afford a frontline attack, that's for sure. Have to fight smart. Ideally from orbit," Reegar agreed.

"We do have stockpiles of antibiotics," Tali argued. "It's not as though everyone would die from a single shot."

 _Maybe not, but a lot of them could. Penetrate the visor, even just a crack, and any airborne germ could do the job for you. Don't even need to break the skin._ Some quarians were tough sons of bitches. Reegar was one. Tali was that kind, too. But Shepard didn't just prefer Tali in engineering because she was young. Open combat was about ten times more dangerous for her anyway.

Reegar agreed. "No, Shepard's right. You've only seen our strike ops, Tali. Don't have all the fancy equipment in a frontline fight. Supplies get strained. Things get ugly, fast."

"What are you doing aboard the _Raaya_? It sounds like you gave your report to the admiralty already," Shepard said.

Reegar cleared his throat. "Er . . . uh, stayed to argue the charges against Tali'Zorah. I've served with her, and she deserves better than what she's getting."

"Thanks, Kal." Garrus could hear the smile in Tali's voice.

"Just stating facts, ma'am."

It turned out that Reegar had been working with Raan to keep the admirals from blowing up the _Alarei_ specifically to give Tali a chance to clear it. The hope was that she could find some evidence to clear her name aboard—or at least provide a very compelling argument to support her loyalty to the Migrant Fleet.

It was a manipulation of the situation in Tali's favor, but it wasn't a kind one, and Tali was more than angry to find out about it—and to learn that Danna and Raan had specifically avoided informing Tali about her father's situation in order to use her horror to sell her innocence to the crowd. Garrus saw Shepard tense at that one, too.

"Are the judges that set on finding her guilty?" she asked Raan when they talked to her.

"Anything involving the geth is a live wire, Shepard," Raan explained. "But there is still hope. Han'Gerrel greatly respects both you and Tali'Zorah for stopping Saren. Admiral Koris sees the whole thing as a war crime and wants to convict. I have no idea what Admiral Xen wants."

The politics over what had happened, it seemed, were less about whether or not Tali had committed treason—it was the general opinion that if Tali had endangered the fleet, she had done so unintentionally—and more about the stance the quarian admirals were going to take toward a war with the geth in the future.

Without meaning to, Garrus, Shepard, and Tali had found themselves neck deep in another one of the biggest political quagmires to hit the galaxy in the last millennium. _How do we end up in these situations? You'd think trying to head off the Reapers would be enough trouble for anyone. Nothing's ever easy._

The quarians were contemplating charging behind the Veil again, but working with Sovereign, a small fraction of the geth had leveled half the Citadel. There was no way this issue would stop with the Migrant Fleet.

Shepard was alarmed to realize what they were actually dealing with here too. "I know the Migrant Fleet is formidable, but even you can't take on the geth," she told Raan.

Raan held out her hands, as if to convey her helplessness. "We grow tired of wandering the stars, Shepard. We want our world back. We have paid enough for our mistake. I am not giving you my opinion. I'm just telling you which way the wind is blowing."

But if the wind was blowing toward war with the geth, the resistance to it was going to be what would run over Tali. Everything Raan had to say only confirmed that their friend's only chance lay in plowing through geth on the _Alarei_ that had brought down a whole squad of soldiers already.

Still, Garrus was distracted from interspecies politics and impossible missions when Shepard got around to asking Raan about her connection to Rael'Zorah and Tali. He hadn't even been sick the time he'd killed a quarian bioterrorist with a cough, but he hadn't known quarian kids spent their entire childhoods in bubbles. Apparently, Shala'Raan had been sick for a week just from attending Tali's birth—limited skin-on-skin contact, nothing any other species would consider harmful in the air, just from standing for a few hours in a clean room outside her suit.

Garrus looked around the _Raaya_ at a hundred people who had to take strenuous precautions every time they touched someone. Casual sex meant a tech program to these people, and they risked their lives having children. Centuries of life aboard starships had turned every speck of dust into a deadly threat. _Quarians are the only other known dextros in the galaxy, but they're so alien._ Humans _have more similar lifestyles._

Of course, some things were universal, parental difficulties being one of them. "I'm not hearing much about Rael's involvement in Tali's life," Shepard observed.

Raan hesitated, and her hands came up to twist together. "It's difficult to explain. I shouldn't—"

Tali reached out to grip Raan's shoulder. "It's okay, Aunt Shala," she assured her. "No secrets between shipmates. I think I told Shepard about my father—and Garrus is one of my best friends."

Raan looked at Garrus doubtfully. "If you say so. Rael was . . . committed to the quarian cause," she explained. "That didn't leave him a lot of time for his family. He wanted to give Tali and her mother the homeworld, or a strong fleet at least. That was how he showed his love."

Garrus regarded Tali. "Gotta respect a dad in uniform," he said.

Tali glanced at him. "You too, huh?" Tali shifted and looked at her feet. "I hope my father's all right."

"One way or another, we'll find out," he promised her.

Shepard moved on from Raan to question the other admirals. The more they heard, though, the more Shepard tensed up. As Daro'Xen, the other woman on the board, flatly dismissed any relevance Tali had to the trial at all but claimed the larger issue was too important to recuse herself, Shepard's fists clenched at her sides, and she slipped into momentary sharpness when Xen revealed her true ambition was to bring the geth back into quarian subjection. She was gentler with Han'Gerrel, an old friend of Tali's father and their strongest supporter on the board, who chortled that Shepard had Zal'Koris backing up worse than a krogan toilet, but when he, too, advocated going to war against the geth, Shepard was firm.

"I hope the quarian people find someplace to live, Admiral, but it sounds like you're playing with fire."

"We're too comfortable now, Shepard," Gerrel told her. "We've got the largest fleet in the galaxy, and we just ride around doing nothing."

Garrus considered the woman, Xen, had characterized Gerrel as an "aging warship," and though her other ideas were insane, she seemed right on the mark here. _You don't start a war just because you can. Especially not this war._

"We might need that fleet to help fight the Reapers, Admiral," Tali argued.

"Then we need a world to shelter our noncombatants while we do it!" Gerrel retorted. Shepard sat back on her right leg and regarded the admiral. _Too late_ , Garrus thought. _These are the people steering the quarian race? A woman who thinks reenslaving the geth is how they win here, a man who wants to fight one major, galaxy-changing war to prepare for fighting another, and an entire board completely fine with using Tali's life as the battleground for this game of political capture-the-flag. And I thought I hated Citadel politics._

By the time they'd made their way over to Koris, Garrus was almost as worried about Shepard as he was about Tali. Even in her hardsuit, he could see that she was vibrating with rage. _I'd be with her, but I'm hardly surprised._ Koris greeted them with cold displeasure. "Judging by your ability to play to a crowd, human, I have done Tali a favor by stripping 'vas _Neema_ ' from her name," he said.

"Which wasn't your intention at all, I know," Shepard retorted, seeming almost relieved the gloves were off. "You'd have been happy if Tali didn't have anyone to speak for her. But thank you."

Tali stepped between the two of them before they had real trouble, bowing politely. "Commander Shepard, this is Admiral Zal'Koris vas _Qwib Qwib_. _Do not ask about the name_ ," she warned Shepard in an undertone.

Koris thawed ever so slightly. "I take no pleasure in this, Tali, truly, but you have gravely endangered and dishonored our fleet," he said gravely.

" _That_ has yet to be proven," Shepard snapped.

"I respect Tali immensely," Koris told her. "Her actions against Saren are to be lauded. But like her father, she wants nothing but the destruction of the geth. The people we created. The people we wronged."

Shepard moved back a centimeter or two even as Tali flared up: "The geth drove us from our homeworld!"

Koris tilted his head. "Of course they did. We tried to kill them."

A quarian acknowledging the quarians were mostly responsible for the war with the geth was in a decided minority on the Migrant Fleet, Garrus knew, even though it was the opinion of most of the rest of the galaxy. Shepard almost seemed impressed. _That doesn't change the fact that the bastard's using Tali as an example for his political agenda._ He even admitted as much, outright saying that he believed he needed to 'send a message' to the warmongerers in the flotilla.

Tali seemed to take this better than Shepard did. "I understand," she said coolly. "I do not agree with you, but I understand."

"Tali. You going to be okay?" Garrus asked as they walked away from Koris. They had spoken to everyone they needed to, so Shepard led the way through the secondary exit EDI had indicated. It led to a darker hallway decorated differently than the entrance they had come through. Here, quarians had spray-painted graffiti art on the walls, including words in a dialect his visor wouldn't auto-translate. _Must be older than the quarian dialects the model has on record._ Sure enough, as he looked, a suggestion came up for a patch. Garrus considered it, then dismissed the suggestion. The angles and lines of the strange words were prettier than Palaven Standard.

"Let's just clear out the geth and find my father," Tali said. "If we can just find him, I'm sure he'll have an explanation."

"Shepard?" Garrus asked.

"Oh, _I'm_ fine," Shepard said. Garrus glanced at her. She just about radiated anger. She didn't need expansive quarian gestures to project it through her hard suit, like an almost tangible wave of heat and tension rolling off of her. He could tell Tali felt it, too, but instead of edging away from it or fidgeting more, the quarian had stepped closer to Shepard and seemed to be less nervous than before.

 _All that anger's for her. Like Captain Redik when he found out about the soldiers hazing those recruits, or Mom, back in school when she found out Evind Kilhieaeris was giving Sol a hard time._ Shepard's anger right now was the kind of anger you could trust, the kind of anger that meant someone somewhere gave a damn about what happened to you and was willing to go against whatever hell you were facing alone with a fire extinguisher just to make sure you were all right.

Garrus almost smiled. _She's going to tear the geth apart. Then those admirals just better watch out._ They rounded the corner into what looked like the hangar EDI had described. There were a few more quarians here—mechanics, possibly representatives come from other ships to keep track of the situation. And one man by an airlock standing at attention. Garrus nodded at him. "Think that's our guy?"

"Let's go find out," Shepard said.


	23. A Question of Loyalty: Fleet

XXIII

A Question of Loyalty: Fleet

Shepard piloted the quarian shuttle to the _Alarei_. The tension in the shuttle was thick enough to cut with a knife. The second they stepped on the _Raaya_ , the mission had become about much more than keeping Tali from exile, the punishment for quarian treason. Tali had as good as abandoned the Migrant Fleet on her own, at least temporarily, after what had happened on Haestrom. This was about her father.

Shepard docked with the _Alarei_ without a problem, and Garrus had his rifle out before she opened the door, prepped for engagement with synthetics. In a way, it was a good thing that it was geth, Garrus thought. All three of them had had plenty of experience taking those things out.

And it didn't take long for the geth to show up. As soon as they stepped inside the airlock to the first room on the research vessel, Garrus saw the lights of the geth's primary processing center moving across the room. Blue lines lit up on his visor—he picked a trajectory and fired.

The layout of the ship was good for a firefight, at least in this room. It looked like a barracks, where the scientists slept in the off-shift, so there were plenty of bunks to use for cover. Good for Tali—she could get in close with her shotgun and still have obstructions between her and the geth.

Right away, Garrus saw Shepard fall into the pattern she'd used on the _SR-1_ when just the three of them had fought together. That hadn't been often, but he'd seen it enough to recognize Shepard taking a step back from her usual aggressive flanking maneuvers, focusing her efforts on supporting Tali. Garrus remembered the first couple of times he'd seen her switch styles like this it hadn't made sense—until he realized Shepard's first instinct wasn't to neutralize the enemy: it was to keep her people safe. With less military training than most of the crew, and much more vulnerable to injury in combat than most of the crew, Tali was more at risk than most of the crew, so Shepard protected her, sometimes at her own expense. One time it had gotten her shot. They'd trained Tali since then, and from what Garrus had seen, Tali'd learned a little on her own. Tali wasn't the liability she'd sometimes been back then, and Garrus hadn't seen Shepard this focused on keeping Tali safe since she'd joined back up. But none of their other missions had been this personal, either.

Shepard watching Tali's back left most of the flanking offense she usually took care of to him. Fortunately, he'd been ready for it. He fired the Mattock in three- and four-shot pulses at the geth coming in on either side.

If Tali had only sent parts and pieces, though, Garrus thought, either something strange had been going on here or EDI _really_ hadn't been kidding when she'd said the geth had been rebuilding themselves. He hit two with an overload program and turned away from the sparks to fire at a blue light floating in the air by the exit on the opposite side of the room. This wasn't just a few geth, this was enough geth to wipe out a unit of quarian marines, state-of-the-art stealth and battle units that were armed and angry.

When they had a second to breathe, Garrus saw them—armed quarian corpses on the floor, surrounded by pools of red blood. Shepard signaled him to stand watch and stepped over them to a console bank on the opposite wall, flickering with somebody's saved vid. "There's a log here," Shepard waited for Tali and Garrus to draw level, then hit the playback button on the screen. A female quarian came up on vid. Garrus noted the time stamp—two days ago.

"Something's slowing down the systems," the quarian on the vid observed. "We're taking down the firewalls to rebalance load distribution. Rael'Zorah ordered us to bypass standard safeties. Following security protocols will take too long."

Out of the corner of his eye, Garrus saw Tali tense. Whether or not she had been careless in the materials she sent here, her father had certainly been careless in how he had handled them. He saw Shepard watching her, too. But Shepard didn't comment. "Let's move on."

The corridor outside of the barracks was silent and dim. The hum of the air filters said the Alarei was still stable, but it was dead in space. Only the emergency lighting still illuminated the interior. "Garrus?" Shepard murmured, keeping her voice low.

"Not picking up any geth energy signatures," he told her. "Not here, anyway."

"Stay sharp," she replied. "This can't be all of them."

There was a door on the left, and Shepard took it. Garrus glanced around what seemed to be a salvage lab, but he stopped at the door, watching the hall as Tali and Shepard took a look. There was an open canister lying on the table with tech pieces still inside. Out of the corner of his eye, Garrus saw Tali gesture at it. "This is one of the storage units I sent to Father," she told them. "Looks like parts from a disabled repair drone, plus a reflex algorithm that I didn't recognize. I got this on Haestrom."

It was important—evidence of what Tali actually had sent back to the fleet. Shepard flexed her wrist, and Garrus's visor alerted him that she'd begun recording the conversation—an interview to use in evidence at the trial. "What made a part worth sending back to your father?" Shepard asked evenly.

"It had to be in working order," Tali explained, "Something that could be analyzed and integrated into other technology. Anything new had priority: technology the geth had developed themselves, signs of modification, clues to their thinking."

Shepard nodded. "And you salvaged this on Haestrom? How? The place was a war zone."

 _I should ask her about her interrogation training sometime_. It would be interesting to learn whether all Alliance operatives were trained to conduct interviews or if it was something they just taught the spec ops. Shepard's question to Tali had two purposes: it would remind the quarians listening of Tali's service to her people on Haestrom, but it would also relax Tali—as an implied compliment to her skills, with no real relevance to the investigation, it was an opportunity for her to breathe for a moment.

"These suits have more pockets than you'd think," Tali said drily. "Quarians have learned how to salvage whatever we can whenever we can." She chuckled. "Within reason. We're not vorcha, but we repair what most people would throw away. Hundreds of the ships in our fleet were salvaged wrecks, either found dead in space or purchased for next to nothing."

Returning to the point, Shepard asked her, "How did you get these things to your father?"

"Sometimes I left packages at secure drops in civilized areas," Tali explained. "Someone on Pilgrimage would see that it was shipped home. For very valuable finds, I'd signal home, and Father would send a small ship."

Shepard gestured at the drone. "Does that salvaged gear give you a clue as to what happened here?"

Tali looked at the parts, the data on the computer console attached. "No. I don't know. Shepard, I checked everything I sent here. I passed up great finds because they might be too dangerous, prone to uncontrolled reactivation or self-repair. I don't know which possibility is worse: that I got sloppy and sent something dangerous or that Father actually did all this."

The evidence was certainly pointing that way, Garrus thought. _This mission would be complicated enough without the question of what handing over whatever evidence we find might do to Tali._ That her father was involved made this galactic security issue tricky, to say the least. He couldn't help looking at Shepard, but she wasn't talking. She was slightly turned away from both him and Tali, visor averted, obviously thinking hard. _There's not really a right choice we can make here, if everything here went down like I think it did_. Then she nodded at Tali to take point and followed her out of the room, ready to back her up.

The corridor wound down and to the left. Even the emergency lighting flickered, casting long, dark shadows on the quarian corpses lying at broken angles on the floor. There was a work station in the middle of the hallway where they found some researcher's tech project—armor shielding based on the geth, but there wasn't anything else on the terminal. Shepard downloaded the info anyway; the professor would be able to make good use of it. But it wasn't until the end of the hall that they had better luck finding intel about what had happened on the _Alarei_.

There was another log set up just before the door. Garrus came up to stand beside Tali as Shepard activated it. "Who's running the system diagnostic?" a researcher on the vid asked a coworker. "I didn't authorize—oh, Keelah! How many geth are networked?"

"All of them," the coworker had responded, like it should have been obvious. "Rael'Zorah—"

"Shut it down!" the researcher yelled. "Shut everything down! They're in the system!"

"That was the beginning of the attack then," Garrus guessed.

"This looks bad," Tali said. "That researcher talked as if there were supposed to be active geth aboard this ship—if they were reactivating geth here for their research—no. They can't have been."

Garrus frowned. In the end, they wouldn't be able to cater to what Tali would be happy thinking had happened here. If a quarian admiral had run experiments on live geth here in an effort to develop weapons to provoke them again, it was a war crime that would impact more than just the Migrant Fleet. _I should talk to Shepard, find out if there really is a ban on discussing the quarians' 'sensitive military matters.' It's bad enough fighting the Reapers. If the quarians bring down the geth on us all again, it'd probably be a good idea if some of the other races who could suffer for it had a clue about what might happen._

The next room was a lab. It looked as quiet as the hall—until Garrus saw a blue light that had blended in with the emergency runners shift in midair. He fired at the same time as Shepard and Tali, and the stealth technology of the unit that had been lying in wait shorted out. It fell to the floor of the lab. Garrus looked down at it.

EDI had said there'd be 'heavy resistance.' For a ship that wasn't supposed to have anything but parts and pieces of geth, that'd been true, maybe, but so far, they hadn't run into what he would call 'heavy' resistance anywhere else. But the geth here had taken out an entire unit of quarian marines, and probably all the scientists.

 _Either the marine unit did better than they thought back there on the_ Raaya, _or there's more up ahead._ _A lot more._

There was still another log at a work station by a flight of stairs up to the next level. At the foot of them, Garrus saw an open, sparking door. _The geth broke through here earlier_.

When Shepard hit playback on the log, a panicked female quarian came on the screen. "We've locked down navigation. Weapons are offline. Our mistake won't endanger the fleet," she said. "They're burning through the door. I don't have much time. I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Jona, if you get this, be strong for Daddy! Mommy loves you very much!" Her voice rose in a scream as geth fire filled the audio and the camera froze—not a scream of fear or pain but of desperation to get that last message to her child.

Garrus looked to Shepard for the order to move, but she was rigid, her left hand locked around the table, staring at the frozen screen on the vid. He reached for her at the same time Tali did, and their eyes met behind Shepard's back for a split second. Shepard tensed then relaxed when they touched her, as if just remembering they were there. She shook her head, and pointed ahead with her gun.

The _Alarei_ 's laboratory stockroom had been upstairs, but here, Garrus's visor started flashing again. "Enemies!" he warned, as the door across the room opened, and geth began charging in, firing already.

In the close confines of the stockroom, they were almost overwhelmed immediately. The geth had waited until they could come at them from two different sides, in a room small enough Garrus and Shepard would be out of their element, forced to fight at close quarters when both of them were deadliest at a distance. _That's the trouble with geth_ , Garrus thought, as he clubbed a hunter out of his way with the butt of his assault rifle, fired on another, and dodged fire from another unit on his left. _Adaptive collective consciousness. Mercs and organics, you can tap into their transmissions, hear them talking to each other over the radio. The geth just think at each other and the plan changes._

Shepard and Tali each hacked a geth unit to fight on their side. Tali's drone tried to give them suppressing fire by one of the doors, but it was ugly for a couple of minutes. Garrus saw both Shepard and Tali taking some fire, and his recently patched armor was taking some damage too. Shepard's heavy pistol glowed blue, charged with disruptor ammunition that worked to short out geth systems even while her omni-tool cooled down. She dodged and ducked, vaulting the low storage drawers and cabinets to get her back against a wall and put some distance between her and the the geth flank. Garrus held on Tali's six, hitting the enemy with the butt of his weapon and his omni-blade as often as he did with his tech attacks or bullets.

In the end, they held out, and the geth stopped coming. The _Alarei_ was silent again except for the sound of three people breathing heavily through their helmet filters. "Everyone alright?" Shepard asked after a moment.

"One of those hunters got through my shields," Tali panted, looking down at a small rip and dripping red patch on her left bicep. "It's a graze. Nothing serious. You?" She ran her omni-tool over the injury, activating a medi-gel application. The wound itself wouldn't be as dangerous as an infection, Garrus knew, but Tali knew that, too, and she didn't seem too worried.

"Armor's looked better, but it's looked worse, too, and I'm alright," Garrus reported.

He saw carbon scoring on Shepard's armor, too, and as he watched, she flexed her hand around her omni-tool and tech activated around her right hip and left calf. "I'll be fine," she told him, catching his gaze. "Let's not let them catch us like that again."

"Sounds like a plan," Tali agreed.

The lighting was better up here, Garrus noted, as Tali took the lead again to head toward the bridge. The geth were concentrating power up toward the front, trying to get the ship moving again. Probably whatever was left of them would be defending the bridge itself.

Tali led them into another hall, and then paused for a moment. Garrus and Shepard stopped with her. Tali was looking at a console bigger than the ones they had seen so far. Measurements and readouts were still scrolling across the left side of the screen. "This console might have something," Tali told them, activating the interface on the wall. Garrus and Shepard waited as she scrolled through several screens, taking in information like only trained technicians could. "Most of the data is corrupted," she reported, "But a few bits are left."

Garrus's visor showed Shepard cuing up her recording software again. "They were performing experiments on geth systems," Tali explained, still scanning the data. "Looking for new ways to overcome geth resistance to reprogramming."

"Did you know what kind of tests your father was running?" Shepard asked, speaking in that neutral, interview voice again.

"No," Tali said. "Father just told me to send back any geth technology I could find that wasn't a direct danger to the fleet. I suspected he might be testing weapons, but I thought he was just working on new ways to bypass shields or armor."

"Do you think testing weapons on the geth was right?" Shepard asked her. Garrus couldn't tell if she was angling for an answer that might make Tali more sympathetic to Zaal'Koris or genuinely asking, but Tali reacted defensively.

"It's not testing weapons on prisoners, Shepard. I only sent Father parts. Even if he assembled them, they wouldn't be sapient. You saw what Saren and Sovereign did with the geth. Any research that gives us an advantage is important."

She had a point, Garrus thought. Outside of companies like Synthetic Insights and specialized technicians like Sensat, there weren't a lot of soldiers equipped to handle geth technology. _And what happened to Sensat?_ the nasty voice in the back of his head asked. Garrus pushed the guilt and self-hatred aside for a better time.

Testing tech on simplified geth tech was smart. It made sense. The geth's reactivation and militarization here proved the admiral had gone a bit further than Tali was claiming he could have, probably veering away from what was ethically acceptable into war-crime territory, actually. But it looked like Tali hadn't been involved in that part of it.

Shepard jerked her chin at the console. "Could any of that data clear your name?"

"Doubtful," Tali replied. "This is mostly results data. Effects of different disruptive hacking techniques. I don't understand all of it. But . . ." she hesitated. "They may have been activating the geth deliberately. I don't know. Nothing here says specifically, but if they were . . . then Father was doing something terrible." Tali gazed at the console. "What was all this, Father?" she murmured to herself. "You promised you'd build me a house on the homeworld. Was this going to bring us back home?"

Garrus distinctly saw Shepard hesitate, then she said, "Tali, it might be time for your people to let go of the idea of reclaiming your world from the geth."

"That'll go well," Garrus muttered under his breath as Tali rounded on the commander.

"You have no idea what it's like!" she cried, gesticulating at the bulkheads. "You have a planet to go back to! My home is one hull breach away from extinction!"

To be fair to Shepard, Garrus thought, she hadn't ever been _really_ at home on Earth. Shepard wasn't exactly open about it, but Tali had been there with him the time Shepard had come close to telling the whole story about how she'd lived before joining the Alliance. Still, Tali was as right as she was wrong. Shepard had grown up passed around like a sack of pebbles. She didn't have people like Tali did. _Like you do._ But she'd grown up in a place humans belonged while Tali had grown up in what amounted to a drifting refugee camp.

Shepard was quiet a moment, but when she answered, she answered gently. "Have the quarians considered colonizing a new world?" she asked.

Tali waved her hand angrily. "We'd have enough difficulty reacclimating to our own native environment. Adjusting for exposure to a foreign colony would be even harder! It's the difference between sixty years and six hundred. For anyone alive now to watch a sunset without a mask, we must take back our home." She made a disgusted noise. "At the very least we can take back one ship," she turned away and stalked off. "Come on."

Garrus quickened his pace to catch up with her. "Tali," he murmured. "I get where you're coming from. It isn't fair your people are still out here. No one alive now had anything to do with what happened three centuries ago."

" _No_ , we _didn't_ ," Tali said vehemently.

Garrus cut her off. "But you _will_ be judged on what you do now. How you go about fighting the geth—and how it affects the rest of the galaxy. You aren't in a vacuum out here. What you do will have an impact. Better to think about it now than after the geth have become the new krogan rebellions. Or worse, the new Reapers."

"The geth have already helped the Reapers," Tali retorted. "We might be doing the galaxy a favor if we wiped them all out." She sighed. "But—I understand your point." She looked around at the ship, the sparking cables, the quarian bodies on the floor and the bloodstains on the walls. "We weren't ready for the geth two years ago, and we aren't ready now. Just a few units did all this. Garrus—I don't want to know what happened here."

She still opened the door to keep moving, and the fire started up again.

Garrus could see the doorway leading to the bridge down a ramp, past climate control and what looked like engineering on the left. There were geth on the ground floor. They had the high ground there, and the advantage. But there were also geth in deep cover at the engineering stations on the upper level, flanking them.

The geth had their neural network. Garrus was fighting with the two people he knew and trusted most on the _Normandy_ , and before either of them said a word, all three of them knew how this would play out. Garrus crouched down behind the railing on the right side of the ramp and took out his sniper rifle, and he went to work. On the left, Shepard was crouched on the other side of the barricade the geth in engineering had set up, focused on tearing down the enemies on their flank. And stupid as it was, Tali charged down the ramp. Like Taylor, Massani, or Grunt would, just like she could take that kind of fire.

Garrus aimed his shots on her flanks, at her six, at the geth trying to close in on Tali on every side, letting her focus on the front. She kept _that_ clear. Her shots were brutal and efficient, and her tech attacks were better than anything he or Shepard had against the geth. Well. One advantage of her approach was she was the same thing to the geth that he and Shepard had been to the mercs on Illium—the enemy they most wanted dead, the focus of most of their fire. And when the geth were focused on taking Tali out, he and Shepard could eviscerate them without too much of a fuss.

Shepard cleared the engineering gallery, and in a couple of minutes, he and Tali had fought off the rest of the geth defenders on the ground. Garrus guessed there might be a few more on the bridge, but they'd won. _Just the three of us against enough geth to kill every scientist here and a whole unit of marines. 'Destroy the enemy with overwhelming force' is the first thing they teach you in basic. It's only after you've fought with a Spectre that you learn overwhelming force isn't worth crap against just a handful of troops with that kind of training._

Shepard came up beside him, and they walked down to join Tali on the ground. Up ahead, there was another work station with a log frozen on the screen. They looked at Tali. Her shoulders were hunched, her visor pointed down, but she nodded. Shepard hit the playback button, and a female quarian came up on the vid. "First entry: Our hacking attempts failed," she reported. "The geth have an adaptive consciousness: Hack one process and the others autocorrect. Still, we're making progress. Rael'Zorah is convinced we'll have a viable system in less than a year. This weapon will put our people back on the homeworld, and it's all because of Rael'Zorah."

That was going to be the difficult part, Garrus thought. The quarians' desire to return to Rannoch was so strong by now that for a lot of them, it would outweigh any concerns about ethics or intersystemic politics. They weren't thinking about whether killing every geth on Rannoch would be genocide or whether what they were doing here could be considered a war crime. They weren't thinking about what provoking the rest of the geth beyond the Veil could mean for the rest of the galaxy. The only thing they were thinking of was everything they'd lost and everything they wanted back.

"The bridge should be just ahead," Tali said. "They—" she broke off whatever she was going to say as they stepped around a workbench and another quarian corpse came into view. "Father!" She bolted forward. Garrus took three quick steps, running a scan for geth in the hallway as Tali fell to her knees beside the corpse, pushing at it, beating at it. "No," she cried. "No no no no. You always had a plan! Masked life signs or an onboard medical stasis program, maybe. You wouldn't—they're wrong! You wouldn't just die like this! You wouldn't—"

Shepard signaled Garrus in one abrupt movement to continue watching the door, and in an extension of the same movement, jerked up on Tali's wrist and pulled her roughly to her chest in one of the most violent hugs Garrus had ever seen. She resituated her arms around Tali and squeezed, heedless of her plate armor.

Tali didn't seem to care. Her fingers flexed against Shepard's armor, seeking a hold. She bowed her head and sobbed, and Garrus heard her vaporators start up inside her helmet. He kept his eyes on the far end of the hallway.

 _We knew from the start he was probably dead. Spirits, though, I hate this._ Sniper, cop, gunnery officer, or tech, Garrus had always liked fixing things. _Some things, though, you just can't fix._ Sometimes there was nothing to say, nothing to do. _And all there is is standing here like an idiot, making sure my friends don't get a bullet through the head while they're taking care of what's really important._

Tali beat her fist against Shepard's shoulder. "Damn it! Damn it! I'm sorry—"

"Don't apologize," Shepard told her. She let Tali shudder and sob against her for about ten more seconds, then Tali stood up.

"Maybe—he would have known I'd come. Maybe he left a message."

She knelt by her father's body, more carefully this time, and after a moment, Rael'Zorah's omni-tool went live, and a holo of his head and shoulders appeared. "Tali, if you are listening, then I am dead," he'd said. "The geth have gone active. I don't have much time. The main hub will be on the bridge. You'll need to destroy it to stop their VI processes from forming new neural links. Make sure Han'Gerrel and Daro'Xen see the data. They must—" The recording, like others they had seen, ended in a blast of geth fire.

Tali stood, but her shoulders were bowed. "Thanks, Dad," she said. Her voice had so much bitterness in it Garrus could taste it.

Shepard approached and put a hand on Tali's shoulder again. "He knew you'd come for him," she offered. "He was trying to help you. It's not perfect. It's not what you wanted, maybe, but he was trying."

Tali looked down at her father. "I don't know what's worse," she observed in a thick voice. "Thinking he never really cared, or thinking that he did, and that _this_ was the only way that he could show it." At this she gestured explosively—at Rael'Zorah, at the _Alarei_ , at the whole damn catastrophe. "It doesn't matter," she decided. "One way or the other, _I_ cared. And I'm here. And we are ending this."

She turned away from Shepard and strode away, shotgun already raised. Garrus hurried after her—and only then noticed his visor's life sign readings acting up, something that had only ever happened in the past when there were geth primes around. "Tali, look out!" he called.

His warning almost came too late. The second the door to the bridge opened, a rocket exploded into the wall above Tali's head. She had rolled forward into a somersault just in time. Garrus saw the shrapnel take out her shields in a burst of blue, and the light over her head went out in a shower of sparks. The smell of explosives and burning metal rose, acrid through the filters of his hardsuit, but Tali's omni-tool was already flashing, snatching the shields from one of the four geth immediately on the other side of the door.

Shepard seized a trooper, and it turned on the prime to the right. As Tali made a tactical retreat to the left, around a bullpen wall and into cover, Garrus filed in after her and joined his fire to the hacked unit's, keeping his body in between Tali and that heavy fire. **92% . . . 78% . . . 45%.**

Heat flared out in a wave as Shepard aimed an incendiary directly at the fuel tank strapped to the back of the destroyer and it went up in a burst of flame, cutting off the prime's line of fire. Shepard charged through the flames as Garrus rounded the corner behind Tali.

"Another prime and two hunters on this side!" Tali cried. "Around the terminal!" Her combat drone rose up from her omni-tool to float ahead of them—but there was another one coming around the corner after them that seemed to be firing. "Hostile drone!" she called.

"You two go forward," Shepard ordered in a voice taut with tension, firing her Locust to short out the drone. "I've got our rear."

Garrus nodded, already sending an overload program arcing around the corner toward the prime hunkered down over the console at the far end of the room, probably trying to break the security the quarians had set up around the ship. Tali's drone zigzagged in the air, drawing and absorbing enemy fire. "Get the hunters!" he told Tali.

She didn't signal or answer him, but her posture shifted. She was still a moment, then her right hand came up, hit something aside, and she fired at a point just ahead. Garrus left her to it as the fire behind them began to slow and a metallic chassis fell to the ground. His shields had recovered to 83 percent. It would have to be good enough. He ran out from cover, aiming at the prime as he went. He saw the blue burst that was the prime's shields giving for good. He aimed his next bursts carefully—four shots along the trajectory toward the central processing unit in the head, and four toward the heavy gun on the right arm. Metal dented, puckered, and buckled, and sparks flew out like a fountain. The prime was still walking, but when Garrus's shields hit 64 percent, the fire stopped coming. The prime was now blind and mostly disarmed. Across the room, there was another trill of Locust fire, followed by another crash as Shepard's prime fell. Then another gun started firing on the prime—Tali's second hunter, hacked and on their side.

It was over in another few seconds, and Tali pointed her shotgun point blank at the last hunter and fired. Its head exploded and it fell back almost a meter, and except for the sound of the engines and air filters, the _Alarei_ was quiet.

Tali breathed hard. She was tired and angry and grieving, but she didn't say anything, and Garrus decided not to press her. She walked over to the console the geth had been waiting at. "Looks like we got here just in time," Garrus said. "They were trying to disable the lock. Navigate out of here or uplink to other tech on the Migrant Fleet."

Tali nodded. "The console is linked to the main hub Father mentioned. Disabling it will also shut down any geth we missed—but it looks like some of the recordings they made remained intact. They'll tell us how this happened. What Father did."

"Are you going to be okay?" Shepard asked quietly.

Tali looked at her. "I know we have to look at this, but—this is terrible, Shepard. I don't want to know that he was part of this."

Garrus walked up next to her. "Mmm. Ignorance might be bliss, but it always bites you in the ass sooner or later. The only way we can make a decision here is to get the evidence, once and for all."

Tali looked over at him, took a deep breath, nodded, and hit the playback button. Rael'Zorah appeared on the console screen. "Do we have enough parts to bring more online?" he asked a nearby researcher.

"Yes, the new shipment from your daughter will allow us to add two more geth to the network," he replied.

"We're nearing a breakthrough on systemic viral attacks," another researcher noted. "Perhaps we should inform the admiralty board, just to be safe."

Rael made a gesture of denial. "No, we're too close," he said. "I promised to build my daughter a house on the homeworld. I'm not going to sit and wait while the politicians argue."

The male researcher seemed annoyed. "We'd have an easier time of it if Tali'Zorah could send back more working material."

But Rael had rounded on him, furious. "Absolutely not! I don't want Tali exposed to any political blowback. Leave Tali out of this. Assemble new geth with what we have. Bypass security protocols if need be." The recording ended.

Garrus's eyes met Shepard's behind Tali. Behind her visor, she looked grim. It was the proof they needed—everything that had happened here had happened under Rael'Zorah's authority. Tali was innocent—her father had deliberately protected her from his actions. But submitting the proof of what he had done would be enough to convict him of her treason instead, and war crimes besides. _Why is irony never friendly?_

"It sounds like he was doing this for you," Shepard offered to Tali. She was trying to make Tali feel better. _But what little girl wants Dad to experiment on and torture sentients as a present, even synthetics in pursuit of reclaiming a planet? And how many quarians were working here? A dozen? Not to mention the unit they sent before us. Admiral Zorah's 'shortcuts' got them_ all _killed._

"I never wanted this, Shepard," Tali said. "Keelah, I never wanted this. Everything here is his fault. I tried to pretend it didn't point to him, but this—when this comes up in the trial, they'll—we can't tell them." Her helmet swung to look down at Shepard. "Not the admirals, not anyone."

Shepard hesitated, and Garrus guessed what she was thinking. Without submitting the evidence Tali was innocent, they didn't have a lot they could do to get her off. "We're not going to decide anything here," she said. "Let's see what the admirals say once we get back."

Tali reached out and gripped Shepard's wrist. "You're my captain in this hearing, Shepard," she said. "It's your decision, but please, don't destroy what my father was. Come on. If we wait too long, they'll decide we're already dead, and none of this will matter."

 _She's willing to be exiled to protect him,_ Garrus realized. _No. It goes further than that. She's asking to be exiled to protect him. How will she take really being 'Tali'Zorah vas_ Normandy _?'_

Garrus fell in line behind Tali and Shepard, heading back toward the shuttle they would take back to the _Raaya_. Back when Tali had introduced them to Admiral Raan, she'd called Shepard 'vas _Normandy_ ,' too: the captain of their ship, but also _from_ that ship more than she was from anywhere else. She'd called Garrus 'vas Palaven,'—a quarian's answer to the volus 'Palaven-clan,'—but he had to admit he wondered. He'd been born in Cipritine, sure enough. But he'd left Palaven, left the Citadel, and left the Hierarchy along with them to follow Shepard—and after that, he hadn't been able to go back. Not really. _In this whole sorry galaxy, there's nowhere you fit so well as on the_ Normandy _, either._ Joker, Karin, Tali, Shepard—all of them were more vas _Normandy_ than they were anything else, Cerberus or not. _And that's really not so bad._

So in the shuttle, while Shepard flew them back over to the _Raaya_ , Garrus leaned over to Tali. "I know it probably doesn't feel like it, but it's going to be okay," he told her. Tali gripped his arm.

"I don't know," she said. "If we have to tell them what my father did—I—"

"We're going to have to tell somebody what happened," Garrus told her. "Your father won't be the last one to try something like it, by the looks of things. But there's no reason anybody needs to know he was involved. If things don't go our way in the hearing, though—you're going to be all right."

Tali looked at him then. "Quarians aren't the only ones to have tight-knit societies. What happens to a turian who leaves the Hierarchy?" _Like you did—twice_ —hung in the air between them.

Garrus forced a smile. "After someone's initial fifteen years of service, it doesn't really matter much," he told her. "You're a full citizen, with as many rights and privileges as you can earn."

"But you didn't serve your full time," Shepard said from the cockpit. It wasn't a question, though Garrus hadn't ever told her.

"I almost did—you got C-Sec to count our mission to stop Saren as service—but I was about three years short when I left for Omega, yeah."

Tali tilted her head. "Three years?" she repeated. "How young do turians begin their service to the Hierarchy?"

"You sure you want to talk about this?" Garrus asked her.

"No—it's helping," Tali assured him. "Please."

Garrus shrugged. Sometimes distraction was good in the moment. _And I suppose if Dad had just died and I was about to be exiled, I wouldn't want to think about it, either._ "Quarians, humans, and turians all have similar lifespans," he explained. "There's a theory evolution took similar paths on Palaven, Earth, and Rannoch, actually. Culture and biology are close _enough_ we seem more like neighbors than a lot of the sapient races this cycle, or so they say. Quarians die about twenty years sooner these days—but that could just as easily be your higher mortality rates due to the fragility from living in space dragging the average down—"

"We think so," Tali agreed. "Another reason we'd like to reclaim our homeworld. A 100-year lifespan may not seem too short compared to 120 years, particularly against a salarian or volus lifespan, but those 20 years do make a difference."

"Turians mature a little faster than quarians or humans," Garrus said, getting back to the subject. "We start basic at fifteen, but you guys catch up quick, and it levels off after that. We serve in the military or any documented form of public service or law enforcement on a world where the Hierarchy has authority until thirty, usually, though naturally, a lot of turians serve a lot longer than that, and there are a few that take—well, 'gap years,' for want of a better term—and get full citizenship later."

"And what's it mean when you don't have full citizenship?" Shepard challenged him.

Garrus paused. He looked at Tali, glanced at the back of Shepard's seat, and dropped his eyes. "It's not quite like this," he said. "The Hierarchy doesn't care what I did on Omega—it's in the Terminus, outside of Council jurisdiction. So I'm not a criminal or an exile. But that I left—it does matter. I can't vote. Probably couldn't get a lot of jobs on Palaven, the Citadel, or our colony worlds. Couldn't qualify for a lot of privileges there." Most homeownership required citizenship, at least. Garrus had been a supporter of the law once. It made sense that people who wanted to live in a safe, prosperous society should work to support and protect it, and there were programs for even disabled individuals to serve their time. _Now, though—I don't know. I could go back. Someone would take me. Patrol unit. Construction crew. But there's a whole list of things worth protecting that the Hierarchy doesn't count._

"And you're okay with that?" Tali asked softly.

Garrus thought before he replied. "Fighting for a broken system is worse than the penalties for breaking off to fight for what's right instead. Maybe that's not an answer, but it's the best answer I've got."

Tali regarded him. "Thanks, Garrus," she murmured.

Garrus felt the shuttle slow as they approached the docking bay on the _Raaya_. "Anytime."

Even the guard had deserted the airlock when they reentered the ship—it seemed everyone was already back in the garden plaza. As they walked down the short corridor, Garrus could hear Zal'Koris's voice addressing the room. "We need to face facts. There has been no word. There is no reason to think Tali'Zorah survived—"

"Sounds like the hearing's already underway," Tali muttered, quickening her step.

Garrus heard Raan arguing for a moment, but as they entered the room, she was preparing to concede. "Very well. Is the admiralty board prepared to render judgment?"

"Sorry we're late," Tali said loudly. Every helmet in the room turned to face her. Garrus heard exclamations, gasps, and a couple of grumbles. He smiled and took his place in the back of the pavilion while Shepard and Tali strode up to the defense dais.

"Tali'Zorah vas _Normandy_ has killed or deactivated every geth aboard the _Alarei_ ," Shepard announced. "The ship can be reclaimed for the Migrant Fleet, and the bodies of those that died in the incident can be recovered with honor. I hope this proves her loyalty to the quarian people."

"Her loyalty was never in doubt. Only her judgment," Koris sniffed, and Garrus saw Shepard's spine stiffen again. _This guy really gets to her_.

"Perhaps Tali'Zorah can offer something to encourage more trust in her judgment," Raan suggested.

Gerrel was more direct. "Did you find anything on the _Alarei_ that could clarify what happened there?"

Shepard hesitated, and Garrus saw Tali seize her wrist. Tali seemed to say something, but he couldn't hear her. No one needed to hear her. Just seeing the movement was enough.

"Does Captain Shepard have any new evidence to submit to this hearing?" Raan said, more pointedly than before.

Shepard's voice rose to soar over the plaza. "Tali helped me defeat Saren and the geth two years ago! That should be all the evidence you need!"

Koris's fists clenched behind the admiral's table. "I fail to see what relevance—"

Shepard cut him off with a deafening, wordless noise of disgust. "Relevance! Don't talk to me about relevance. _Tali_ is completely irrelevant to what _any_ of you are trying to do here. This hearing isn't about her! It's about the geth!"

Koris stood. "This hearing has nothing to do with the geth!"

"Nothing to do with a 'message' you want to send?" Shepard retorted, throwing his own words back in his face. "You want people to sympathize with the geth! Han'Gerrel wants to go to war!" She gestured toward Gerrel, as contemptuous of him as of Koris. "None of you care about Tali! Even though she knows more about the geth than any other quarian alive, and you'd think that if you were trying to decide what to do about them you might want to listen to what she had to say! But no: you're putting her on trial! Tali'Zorah saved the Citadel! She saved the _Alarei_! She showed the galaxy the value of the quarian people! I can't think of stronger evidence of her loyalty than that!"

 _No indictment the quarians can give Tali would be as strong as that one_. Shepard's words rang out over a plaza that was just about silent—save for the ever-present sound of the engines. The only other thing Garrus heard was the shifting from four suddenly very awkward admirals. He tightened his mandible so he didn't laugh, and thought he'd never respected Shepard more. _Nothing like seeing Shepard scold the ruling body of an entire species like a bunch of primary school children_.

After the most uncomfortable pause Garrus had ever heard, Raan looked to either side of her. "Are the admirals prepared to render the judgment?" she asked again.

Gerrel entered his judgment into a pad in front of him immediately. Xen did, too—even she wasn't crazy enough not to see this was ridiculous. It took Koris another two seconds to give up. But he did.

Reading the result in front of her, Raan gave the judgement to the plaza. "Tali'Zorah, in light of your history of service, we do not find sufficient evidence to convict. You are cleared of all charges. Commander Shepard, please accept these gifts in appreciation for you taking the time to represent one of our people."

Shepard gave the admirals another good, long glare. "With all due respect, admirals, I didn't," she said. "You gave her a name and said it yourself—Tali'Zorah vas _Normandy_ is one of _mine_. If you appreciate me, though, listen: the Reapers are coming. I'm going to need your help to stop them. Please don't throw away your lives against the geth."

Koris shifted. "Thank you, Commander Shepard. I hope this board carefully considers your advice."

Shepard didn't say a word, but from behind the dais, where Koris couldn't see, Garrus saw her left hand by her side move into a gesture Jack had given him before. Again he fought the urge to laugh.

"This hearing is concluded," Raan said. "Go in peace, Tali'Zorah vas _Normandy_. Keelah se'lai."

The quarians in the plaza repeated the ritual blessing and dispersed, heading off to their separate stations and ship shuttles, already gossiping about the hearing. Garrus let the crowd thin a little before walking back over to Shepard and Tali.

"I can't believe you pulled that off," Tali was saying. "What you said—I've never had anyone speak like that on my behalf. Thank you for being there for my father and me. Even when—"she cut off. "Thank you."

Shepard shifted. Her hand came up behind her neck—a useless gesture in full armor, but communicative enough of her embarrassment. "Tali, about what your father said—what he did—you deserved better."

Tali's posture still drooped. She was still unusually still, but Garrus heard a smile in her answer. "I got better, Shepard. I got you."

Shepard tensed all over, and inside her visor, Garrus could just make out her features—gone rigid. Her readout on his visor, left in targeting mode again from the _Alarei_ , suddenly flashed blue as her heartrate jumped and her core temperature dropped.

It was definitely a fear-based fluctuation, and one similar to one he'd seen from her before. His visor hadn't had human readouts then, but he'd seen a similar response from Shepard, though less extreme, that day she'd opened up about her past two years ago and Tali had said they were friends in the first place. _The Reapers, the Collectors, none of that scares her. The idea that someone cares about her, that someone's counting on her for more than just orders in combat—that does._

But Shepard forced a laugh and punched Tali in the arm. "Hey, now. Don't make me blush. We can still go back in and get you exiled."

Tali laughed, too. "Thanks, but I'm fine with things like this. It's fun watching you shout."

They went around to see some of Tali's friends, so she could say goodbye to Gerrel and Raan, Danna and—Garrus noticed—to Reegar. A couple of them asked questions that indicated they'd noticed Shepard might have found more than she'd released, but they were all too relieved and too embarrassed to pry too much further.

It got Garrus thinking again, though, about how much they were going to release outside of the fleet. They left the _Raaya_ to return to the _Normandy._ Garrus took his helmet off for the first time in hours and felt another twinge of sympathy for Tali. She didn't seem to notice, though. Goodbyes said to the Migrant Fleet, she walked off toward the elevator in a daze. Garrus watched her go and turned to Shepard.

Like him, she'd taken off her helmet almost the moment they got through the _Normandy_ airlock. Her hair was plastered to her head with sweat, curls breaking free of the gel she'd set it in. Helmet under her arm, she ran the fingers of her other hand through her hair, sending airflow through to her scalp. Feeling his neck getting warm, Garrus cleared his throat. "How much intel are we releasing?" he asked quietly.

Shepard's mouth tightened, and she shook her head ever so slightly. "Hit the showers," she said. "Battery's probably due for the next calibration cycle. You can catch me up on how we're doing during rounds. See you later, Garrus."

She walked off, but even as she did, her fingers moved over her omni-tool, already typing an encrypted message she wouldn't tell him aloud—too sensitive to speak where EDI could hear, too short to call him up to her cabin. His own omni-tool buzzed in less than thirty seconds. His encryption program took down her basic lock in another five, and her message came up on his 'tool. **I'm locking down names for this. I don't want "Rael'Zorah" in anything going out. But I'm going to send a brief to IM in case he finds out anyway, and a full report to Anderson. And I won't give a gag order if you want to send the gist of what happened back there to the Hierarchy.**

 **Thanks,** Garrus typed back. The truth was, he wasn't entirely sure who he could trust with the report of what had happened on the Migrant Fleet today. The Hierarchy didn't have the cleanest record of palatable methods when it came to finding intel on the enemy, and he wasn't positive any report he might send to some official back in the Hierarchy wouldn't just end up inspiring some military researcher to try the same thing and end with the Hierarchy provoking a war with the geth instead.

He'd write the report all the same, he knew. File it with everything else he was compiling about the Collectors and the Reapers, everything the Hierarchy might need to know about what they were doing here and the impact it was going to have on the galaxy. They needed to be ready.

* * *

The _Normandy_ turned her nose toward Tuchanka that afternoon. Shepard made her usual rounds before dinner—but both she and Tali skipped the mess that night. Garrus ate with Goto, Chakwas, Rolston, and Hawthorne and hoped they'd be alright. Hoped Shepard was with Tali instead of down in the hold with Grunt or hiding out in her cabin after today. He thought about leaving to find one or both of them, but after dinner he went back to the battery instead, sat down on his bunk, and opened up a link back to Palaven.

 **I didn't die today** , he typed.

He had to wait a few minutes before Solana responded. **Yesterday now, G. Twice in one day for you, huh? You must really miss us or something.**

 **Today I did,** Garrus replied. **Is Mom there?**

 **She's up,** came the answer. **She's calling me Devora and asking about the erdin they had right after she joined Haliat, before she married Dad. You don't want to talk to her.**

Garrus sighed. If his mother was confusing Solana with her own sister, killed on tour in a pirate raid ten years ago, and the pet erdin they'd had twenty years before that, Solana was probably right. But there was even more to worry about. **You're right there with her? Don't you need to be at work?**

 **We've had to cut back Irial's hours with her** , Solana reported shortly. 'Irial,' Garrus guessed, was the nurse they'd been hiring to make sure Auralie didn't run into too much to handle during the day. Another text scrolled across his screen, like an excuse. **Dad does what he can, but someone's got to sit with Mom when neither of them can be here. I'm taking some time off.**

 _Basically, we're out of money_ , Garrus translated in his head. Routine healthcare was free to every citizen in the Hierarchy, but for something like Corpalis, you still needed specialists and medication that wasn't.

Garrus's eyes stung, and it was a long time before he could reply. **You shouldn't have dropped out, Solana. It should have been me.**

 **Yeah, well, you're off playing hero on the other side of the galaxy,** she answered. **Guess we'll both be a disappointment to our ancestors and descendents.**

 **Always provided we have descendents.**

 **There's always that, of course** , Solana conceded. **You die before I ever have nieces and nephews, and I end up alone forever. Nice to know there's a bright side. Sure you haven't knocked anyone up living wild as a glamorous outlaw out in the ass-end of the galaxy, G? Even an asari strip-dancer?**

Garrus laughed aloud. **Trust me, that's one thing you don't have to worry about.**

 **Because why should either of us actually have fun throwing our lives away?** Solana asked rhetorically.

 **I'll send money next time I get paid** , Garrus promised.

 **It'd help. Not as much as you would, but I'm learning not to hold my breath for that. Is it good night?**

 **More or less,** Garrus agreed. **Is it good morning?**

 **How about goodbye?** Solana suggested. **Hear from you tomorrow? Or am I looking at another month?**

 **We'll see how it goes,** Garrus typed. **But I'll be in touch.**

 **Take care of yourself, G,** Solana said. She signed off, and Garrus lay back in his bunk.

He felt as massive and heavy as a planet, and he knew odds were he wouldn't sleep better tonight than he did most nights, but as he stared at the battery ceiling, Garrus felt both guilty and relieved that at the very least, tonight he wasn't Tali.

* * *

 **A/N: Guess what! I'm not dead, and neither is this fic. Hope some of you are still out there. For those of you that are going back and reading _The Disaster Zone: Resurrection_ alongside _Sometimes Grace_ , the end of this chapter is concurrent with DZ:R Chapter Four, "Something Better." Shepard is _pissed_ about how the people that claim they care about Tali have treated her, but the orphaned foster kid and soldier who has spent all her life holding others at a distance is very unconvinced Tali's doing any better to trust her, especially on what's supposed to be a suicide mission. **

**Review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMS**


	24. Light-Bringer: Epimetheus

**A/N: "Epimetheus" means "hindsight." In Greek creation myths, Epimetheus was one of two Titan brothers that helped the gods create the world—the brother who, in contrast to the acute Prometheus, often looked back to realize he had made a terrible error.**

* * *

XXIV

Light-Bringer: Epimetheus

As Shepard had planned, Joker had them in orbit over Tuchanka by the next afternoon. Garrus had been expecting a couple days off while Shepard and Grunt went down to the surface to deal with whatever was wrong with him, so it surprised him when he got a page to gear up for recon.

Still, he wasn't complaining. With the relays, the Citadel was hours away. He knew whatever the rest of the crew had to resolve—Taylor, Massani, Samara; he'd seen it—Shepard was planning to go there next. Sidonis was so close he could taste it. The sooner they resolved this situation with Grunt, the sooner they could look for Sidonis. And maybe there was a little thrill in going somewhere he was so likely to end up torn to pieces. _Unhealthy_ , he noted somewhere in the back of his mind.

He met Grunt, Shepard, and Niels in the hold by the shuttle. The krogan was just about bouncing on the balls of his armored feet. His armor squeaked as it shifted around him. "Tuchanka!" he said. "The great krogan homeworld. I have wanted to see this place. Weird we've been given clearance to land, Shepard. Tank says only traders are usually allowed since the end of the wars, and only for a few minutes. After that, they make good target practice."

"Yeah, I wondered about that," Shepard admitted. "We had an Urdnot friend once. I hear Wrex went back to Tuchanka. Maybe he spoke up for us. Or for you, anyway, when we transmitted ahead about your problems focusing."

"You think Wrex is here?" Garrus asked, climbing into the shuttle after Grunt and extending his hand back to Shepard.

Shepard shrugged and took it, letting him swing her up into the shuttle. She took her usual seat by the door beside him. "I asked the Illusive Man where all of you were the first time I met him. To the best of Cerberus's knowledge, at least Wrex was here a couple months ago."

"Urdnot Wrex," Grunt repeated. "The krogan who fought by your side against Saren. A legendary warlord and soldier. He's lived a thousand years. Meeting him would be an honor."

Shepard told Grunt a little more about Wrex. Garrus said his bit—krogan or not, Wrex had won his respect in the time they'd worked together. He'd known a grand total of two krogan who weren't bloodthirsty thugs out to kill themselves crushing the galaxy, and Krul had been crazy in some other ways. Wrex was a warrior, one of the best Garrus had ever met. He was smart, and he did it all without being any less of a krogan.

But frankly, Garrus was more distracted by Shepard.

 _Does she know how close she's sitting?_ There was plenty of room on the shuttle bench for her to move; he'd given her that much. But she hadn't. _It's not like either of us can feel it. Plate armor._ But there her leg was, pressed right next to his—and somehow, he could. Their landing in Urdnot's camp came sooner than he wanted.

The camp was underground, of course. The surface of the planet was still consumed in a nuclear winter the krogan had set off a thousand years or more ago, fighting among themselves. Still, as Garrus jumped out of the shuttle after Shepard, he looked around and found it hard to believe that the krogan homeworld had been in this condition even before the Rebellions. "You brought the antirad?" he muttered to Shepard. The atmosphere on Tuchanka was breathable for humans and turians. They hadn't bothered with their helmets, but the air still made Garrus's plates tingle, and he knew it'd be worse for Shepard. He shivered. _Cold, too._

"Applied a double layer before leaving the _Normandy_ , and I've got more in my belt. But I hope we won't have to stay long," Shepard muttered back.

The outskirts of the Urdnot camp were raw and ugly, an open wound of broken concrete, dirt, and oxidized metal. No plants. No birds. The only animals here were varren—and for some reason, a pyjak a krogan fired and missed at darting out through a corner. And by a ramshackle recruitment booth off the docking platform, Garrus saw a krogan and a vorcha in the red armor of the Blood Pack. _Great. Let's hope Liara really did keep what happened on Illium off the extranet and out of merc communications. Eclipse knew us by sight by the end. Not that I'd guess they're talking much to the Blood Pack anymore._

The path deeper into the camp ran down some stairs and to the left, but they were stopped just off the platform by an armored guard with a vorcha on a lead. He jerked his head at Shepard. "The clan leader wants to speak with you." His nostrils flared, and he glared at Grunt. "Keep your rutting pet on a short leash. Get him the Rite soon or put him down."

Grunt bristled, but Shepard grew intent. "You know what's wrong with him?" she demanded. "What he needs?"

The guard waved a hand. "There's nothing wrong with him. Just go speak to the clan leader."

EDI's voice came over the radio then. "Urdnot clan reports use weak encryption. I see references to a captured salarian in the logs of the chief scout. Also, I have been unable to access local medical records. I suggest asking the local clan leader for assistance with Grunt's problem."

Garrus glanced at Shepard. "Captured salarian?" he repeated.

"Yeah, we had a couple of reasons to come here," she admitted in a low voice. "A friend of the professor's has been captured. Grunt's more important right now, and I wanted to get a feel for how these guys would react before I brought a turian _and_ a salarian down to the krogan homeworld."

"Happy to be your test balloon," Garrus murmured.

"I knew you would be."

The caution wasn't misplaced, though, Garrus thought as they made their way down a metal corridor. As they walked he heard two sentries talking about what they wanted to do to the turians someday. Perhaps it wasn't very creative, but it was a very vivid description. The upside seemed to be the two sentries were young and sheltered enough they didn't know what a turian looked like and didn't notice when Garrus walked right past them.

Grunt was usually quiet, but he stopped twitching as they walked, which made for a change these days. As they stepped into the camp, his fists clenched by his sides. "This is the great krogan homeworld?" he asked, quietly. "This is the land of Kradoc, Shiagur, and Viool? This chunk of rock is barely worth standing on!" He looked at Shepard, then down. "Never thought I'd miss the tank."

Shepard glanced back at him. "Real life doesn't often measure up to history and legend," she told him. "Krogan or human, we're better in stories than we are off the page. I'm sorry."

Grunt regarded her, then set his shoulders. "Let's find the clan leader and get this over with."

Garrus looked over the camp. _Honestly, I could've expected worse_ , he thought. He heard snarling from a pit nearby and knew the krogan were fighting varren. There still wasn't a plant anywhere to relieve the oppressive gray and brown of the landscape, and the harsh, industrial lights shoved up through the rocks overhead didn't help. But he saw a mechanic working on a vehicle. A store. Guards on the perimeter and friends sharing drinks around a fire. "Tuchanka's in bad shape," he told Grunt. "But Urdnot isn't. Look around. I'll tell you: krogan on the Citadel and Omega don't look like this. These people have pride and purpose. They've got a community here. And they look like they're building something."

Grunt took a second look at the camp and made a noncommittal noise.

The clan leader's position was obvious. They had him set up on a dais, if a mound of pulverized concrete could be called that, and they'd made a big chair of larger slabs of concrete for him to sit in. Garrus couldn't see him too well, but he looked bored, leaning on a fist propped up on the arm of his chair while another krogan spoke to him.

A guard with a shotgun stopped them before they climbed to the top of the mound. "Halt. You must wait till the clan leader summons you. He is . . . in talks." The guard glanced with distaste at the krogan speaking to the clan leader, like he was as bored as the boss.

"You know what tradition demands," the standing krogan was saying. "Clan Urdnot must respond. Your reforms will not go unopposed. You risk appearing weak at a critical time—"

"Spirits, it's an ambassador," Garrus muttered.

"God," Shepard replied in the same disgusted tone.

The clan leader heard the unfamiliar voices. His head turned, and Garrus recognized him. Urdnot Wrex jumped to his feet, grinning. "Shepard!"

Shepard broke out into a smile herself. "Good enough?" she asked the guard, pushing past him. "Excuse me."

Wrex chuckled and clasped Shepard's forearm, pounding her back. "Shepard! My friend!" He pushed her back to arm's length to look at her and nodded approvingly. "You look well for dead, Shepard. Should have known the void couldn't hold you."

"Looks like helping me destroy Saren and the geth has worked out for you," Shepard responded. "Glad we didn't have to kill each other on Virmire."

"Bah!" Wrex scoffed. "You made the rise of Urdnot possible. Virmire was a turning point for the krogan, though not everyone was happy about it. Destroying Saren's genophage cure freed us from his manipulation. I used that to spur the clans to unify under Urdnot."

This wasn't just one clan, Garrus realized. He was standing in the dominant clan of Tuchanka, the culture setting the pace for krogan everywhere these days. But behind Wrex, the ambassador was fuming. "You abandoned many traditions to get your way. Dangerous."

Wrex turned on him. He closed the distance in two strides and headbutted the ambassador, hard enough to make his head snap back. The ambassador scowled, rubbing his head, but stepped back. "Speak when spoken to, Uvenk," Wrex growled. "I'll drag your clan to glory whether it likes it or not." He turned around then to look at Garrus, and Garrus stepped forward to clasp his old companion's arm in turn. "Garrus, still knocking around with Shepard?" Wrex laughed again. "Can't say you look as good. You've picked up some battle scars."

"A few. It's good to see you, Wrex."

"Watch your step on Tuchanka." Wrex warned him. "You're Shepard's crew, and she's under my protection, but a lot of krogan would like the chance to tear a turian apart, away from the Citadel and their fleet. I'll tear them apart if they try, but that might not help you much. Stay close to Shepard." His nostrils flared, and he smirked. "Don't guess that'll be a problem for you."

Garrus cursed the krogan sense of smell; wondered briefly whether Wrex was picking something up from him or from Shepard or both; and as Grunt started to frown, stepped in to fill the silence. "Your concern for my safety is heartwarming, Wrex. Don't worry: we only plan to kick up a little trouble."

Wrex laughed. "I'll bet. What brings you here? How's the _Normandy_?"

Shepard grimaced. "Destroyed in a Collector attack. I ended up spaced."

"Well, you look good," Wrex said again. "Ah, the benefits of a redundant nervous system."

Shepard smiled ruefully. "Yeah, humans don't have that."

Wrex blinked. "Oh, it must have been painful, then. But you're standing here, and you've got a strong new ship. Brings me back to the old days. Us against the unknown, killing it with big guns. Good times."

They fell into small talk, then, mostly about Wrex's position and plans for the krogan. As they talked, Garrus began to wonder if he should be more impressed or worried. Shepard seemed happy to find Wrex was the Urdnot clan leader, that the rest of the krogan clans were falling in line behind him, but she didn't seem surprised. But for the second time in two days, Garrus realized, they were standing at the epicenter of what could be a major galactic shift—Reapers or not. For the first time since the implementation of the genophage, the krogan on Tuchanka were organized. They were building. Wrex had scientists studying agriculture. He'd implemented breeding programs with other clans and the krogan females—which usually lived separately these days for their own protection. Clans that hadn't fallen in line were being disciplined, sometimes wiped out, by the ones that had. _It's a whole new dynamic for the krogan, and it might just work._ On the one hand, the Krogan Rebellions had completely broken the krogan people. It was good to see them coming back. On the other hand, Garrus wasn't sure the Council would agree. The unified krogan clans had once threatened the galaxy.

 _I liked Wrex. That was surprising enough. But I didn't know this was in him._

Eventually, Shepard got around to the reason they'd come to Tuchanka. She nodded at Grunt, and he came forward, chin lifted in a way that was more reminiscent of Shepard herself than any krogan Garrus had ever seen. _Don't smile. This is a big deal to him._

"I have a krogan on my crew," Shepard was saying. "He has some kind of sickness and needs treatment."

Wrex stared at Grunt for a long, silent moment. His nostrils flared and relaxed. "Where are you from, whelp?" he said finally, more gently than you would've expected from any sentence containing the word 'whelp.' "Was your clan destroyed before you could learn what is expected of you?"

The other warlord, the ambassador, had come close again, and he was staring at Grunt, too. Grunt didn't acknowledge him but stayed focused on Wrex. "I have no clan," he said. "I was tank-bred by Warlord Okeer. My line distilled from Kradoc, Moro, Shiagur."

The other warlord, Uvenk, sneered. "You recite warlords, but you are the offspring of a syringe."

Now Grunt looked at him. "I am pure krogan. You should be in awe."

Wrex stroked his chin. "Okeer is a very old name, a very hated name."

"He is dead," Grunt said.

"Of course," Wrex said, like it was obvious. "You're with Shepard. How could he be alive?"

"I need Grunt back up to speed," Shepard told Wrex. "What's wrong with him?"

Wrex waved a dismissive hand. "There's nothing wrong with him. He is becoming a full adult."

Garrus sighed. "Adolescence?" Every species in the galaxy went a little insane going through puberty. They didn't have time to deal with whatever insanity came with a teenage krogan. "Can't we just take him to Omega and buy him a few dances?"

Wrex rolled his eyes. "I don't care what aliens call it. Krogan undergo the Rite of Passage."

Uvenk exploded. He thrust his claw in Wrex's face. "Too far, Wrex!" he cried. "Your clan may rule, but this thing is not krogan!" He spat in the cement at Grunt's feet and strode off the mound.

Wrex watched him go. "Idiot," he said mildly, and turned his attention back to Grunt. "So, Grunt, do you wish to stand with Urdnot?"

A clan—Grunt had talked about that since he'd first woken up. Not much that crazy krogan who'd made him had taken in his head, but that had. _Of course, his dream was also to kill us all when he found one._ But now Grunt hesitated, looking back at Shepard.

She shrugged, smiled slightly, though her eyes were guarded. No one else on the ship could bring the kind of muscleGrunt did. Not even Massani came close. _If he joins Urdnot and bails on us, it'll be a hell of a blow to the mission._ "Grunt, it's your choice," Shepard told him.

"Big of you," Garrus muttered.

Grunt ignored him. He looked out over Urdnot again, then back at Wrex, and this time, he looked more determined than disappointed. "It is in my blood. It is what I am for."

Wrex was pleased, anyway. "Good boy," he said. He pointed at a set of stairs off to the left. "Speak with the shaman. He's over on the second level. Give him a good show, and he'll set you on the path." His eyes gleamed, and he nodded at Garrus and Shepard. "You, too, Shepard. How many times have you stepped in a mess for your crew?"

Shepard frowned. "He needs a sponsor," she guessed. "Some kind of partner." She sighed. "Okay, I'm in."

Garrus didn't like to think about what kind of 'rite of passage' krogan teenagers might go through to be accepted into a clan. "I'm with you."

"Agh, you were always coming," Grunt growled, waving a hand, and the gleam of amusement in Wrex's eyes brightened. Grunt bounced on his heels. "Let's go. I want to see what this Rite's about."

Shepard shook her head. "Give us a minute, Grunt. If nothing's really wrong with you, there's something else I need to talk to Wrex about."

Grunt's eyes narrowed, but then he threw up his hands. "Ugh. Fine."

Wrex waited. "I'm also looking for a salarian," Shepard said in a low voice. "He was captured by the Blood Pack and brought here."

Wrex nodded slightly, and gestured across the camp. "My scout commander can direct you. He's probably near the perimeter running target practice. Don't take too much of his time. I need a constant watch on the other clans."

Shepard held out her hand, and she and Wrex shook again. "Thanks for your help, Wrex. Maybe we'll talk more later."

"Ah, get out of here, Shepard," Wrex said, waving them away.

Shepard led them off the cement mound and faced Grunt. "Look, I want to go see the shaman about getting you admitted to Urdnot," she said. "But the professor has a friend whose life might be in danger. If they haven't killed him already. You understand?"

Grunt frowned. "What's a salarian doing on Tuchanka?"

Shepard grimaced. "I didn't say Mordin's friend was smart."

"You want to help him first. If it's not too late," Grunt guessed.

"That alright?" Shepard asked quietly.

Grunt rolled his eyes. "He's probably dead. Aliens don't survive long on Tuchanka. Know that much from the tank. But I know you, Shepard. Fine. We'll wait."

Shepard smiled at him. "I appreciate you, Grunt. Why don't we head back to the _Normandy_? I don't know what the Rite of Passage involves, but it sounds intense. You could probably use some time to prepare."

Grunt agreed, and the three of them started to head back to the shuttle. Garrus watched Shepard carefully. _She doesn't want Grunt with us when she looks for the professor's friend. Something's going on._ "You and Mordin are going to need backup." Garrus kept his tone neutral.

The only reason Shepard would keep their krogan off a mission on Tuchanka was because there was something she didn't want him to know. She didn't classify much from her regular ground team; he only remembered one time back on the _SR-1_ , when she'd received a call from the Alliance and gone down to Agebinium with Alenko and Williams—one of the only times she'd taken both humans in the ground team—and none of them had said a word about what they'd done. This wasn't a special Alliance operation, but a lone salarian on Tuchanka, friends with Mordin Solus? It wasn't a huge stretch to imagine it might have something to do with the STG.

"No vid, no reports," Shepard muttered back as Grunt climbed on the shuttle back to the ship, confirming his suspicions.

Garrus nodded. "You got it."

* * *

The glares they received as they walked back through Urdnot—a turian, a salarian, and a human female—were more toxic than the atmosphere. Mordin kept looking around, glancing longingly at the shadows, the empty space of no-man's land out beyond the perimeter. Garrus saw krogan fingering their shotguns as they passed, growling at their friends, gazing at his head fringe like they'd like nothing better than to pull it back from his head.

"I feel so warm and welcome here," he said in an undertone.

Shepard's lips curved up. "Just keep walking."

Wrex's scout commander was on the perimeter like Wrex had said, identifiable by a yellow stripe on the shoulder of his battered, mismatched armor. Beside him, another scout manned a gunnery post. He fired, and in the distance, Garrus heard the surprised, agonized screech of a pyjak. _Pests near the food stores._ It seemed like a waste of ammo to Garrus, but he had to admit he was impressed by the scout's accuracy.

Shepard cleared her throat, folding her arms and looking out into the dark.

The scout commander shot her a contemptuous glance. "What do you want, human? You're crowding my hump." He turned his shoulder toward Garrus and the professor, completely and obviously ignoring them. _I feel like I should be really insulted,_ Garrus thought, with a trace of amusement. He wasn't.

"I'm looking for a salarian," Shepard said. "The Blood Pack captured him, and he was last seen around here."

The scout commander did look at Mordin then, with a trace of understanding. "I heard about that salarian. Poor bastard. If it's Blood Pack, then Clan Weyrloc has him. Sent one of my scouts to check it out, but he never reported back. Guess they got him too." He shrugged. "Chief told me to give you one of the trucks. Just follow the highway to Weyrloc's base, if you've got the quads to deal with him and the Blood Pack."

Shepard shifted. "What do you know about Clan Weyrloc? What are they like? And how are they involved with the Blood Pack?"

The scout commander snorted. "They're tough humps, and they're not friendly, like we are. You ever run into the Blood Pack? Mercenary gang."

"We might have run into them once or twice," Garrus said. _Figures those scum have the professor's friend._

The scout commander looked at him then, with s-omething almost like respect, and he turned to face all three of them. "Clan Weyrloc started it," he told them. "One of the only gangs with an offworld presence. They're fanatics, totally devoted to Weyrloc Guld. Whatever they did with your salarian, Guld's behind it."

Shepard shot Garrus a little frown. He shrugged. "Intersystemic gangs have a different presence on every world, sometimes in every city," he told her. "On Omega, the Blood Pack are killers for hire . . . or muscle for even nastier killers. I never heard about Weyrloc Guld. Doesn't mean he's not big here."

Shepard turned her attention back to the scout. "Tell me about him."

"Lucky bastard," the krogan grunted. "He's got two children. One of them's a girl. Some people think he's got a destiny. Not me. I had a cousin who won twenty consecutive games of quasar. I'd ask my cousin for a loan, but I wouldn't swear allegiance to him. Luck, that's all it is. Same for Guld."

"Tell me about his base."

The scout commander gestured with his hand, indicating the general direction. "Last I heard, the clan was holed up in an old hospital. I haven't seen it, though. I've only seen Clan Weyrloc from a distance. If I'd gotten closer, I'd have taken a shot. You get inside, though, bring a big gun. Weyrloc's base is crawling with Blood Pack."

"And they don't like us anyway," Garrus muttered.

"No," Shepard assented. "But a hospital doesn't sound too defensible. Why'd they hole up there?"

The scout commander looked down at her, like he was amused anyone so stupid could talk and breathe at the same time. "Any hospital on Tuchanka has to be built well enough to withstand a bunch of enraged krogan. When an injury forces us to switch over to secondary organs, things get messy. Higher thought processes don't always transition properly. 'Blood rage,' they call it."

Shepard made a face. "Any idea what Weyrloc might be doing with the salarian?"

It was pretty obvious the scout commander couldn't care less. "I assume they wanted to torture him," he said, ignoring the professor's set mouth and stiffened shoulders. "You don't take somebody home just to kill them. It's messy. Maybe he pissed of the Blood Pack, and they brought him here for special treatment. No skin off my hump what they do with him. One less alien on Tuchanka."

Shepard didn't answer, but she stepped forward, situating herself so the scout commander would have to go through her to get at Garrus or at Mordin. The krogan met her eyes, and he almost smiled as she extended her hand for the vehicle key.

He swiped the truck key off the barricade and slapped it into Shepard's gauntlet. Only then did Garrus remember Shepard would be driving them over to Weyrloc's base.

"I just remembered, I'm not feeling great," he said, falling in step with her as they walked toward the line of trucks the scout commander had indicated. "Maybe I should head back to the _Normandy_."

Shepard's mouth twitched. "Shut up, Vakarian."

"Joke?" the professor guessed. "Unafraid to face Blood Pack—ah. Shepard has bad reputation driving ground vehicles."

"Nobody's ever died," Shepard protested.

"Run into a cliff, gone over a cliff, rolled over three or four times and into a ravine, driven straight into a rachni nest, and I spent an average of six hours after every ground mission repairing damage to the Mako." Garrus listed off, turning toward the truck that lit up as Shepard pressed the key fob. He circled the truck, opened the gunner's door, and sprang up into the seat beside Shepard's. "But nobody died." As the professor strapped himself into the back seat, Garrus took a chance and winked.

The driver's seat of the krogan truck almost swallowed Shepard. Her head was actually a little higher than some krogan, but she was so much smaller that she was perched on the very edge of the seat in order to reach the pedals, and there was such an enormous gap between her back and the seat back, that for sure the safety harness wasn't going to do her a lot of good. But she reached across and jerked down the gun controls in front of him, almost hitting the smirk right off his face, and gave him a sugary sweet smile. "That could always change."

Garrus laughed, and set his visor to download a plan for the gun, analyzing how it worked. He started it up as Shepard started the engine. There was a beep as the truck's intranet receiver got a destination from the scout commander. "Here we go," he said, loudly enough to be heard over the roar of the engine.

* * *

To Garrus's enduring disappointment, the drive to the Weyrloc compound the chief scout had sent him to didn't provide him with a lot of opportunities to mock Shepard. As they drove up out of Urdnot's camp and onto the surface, he saw a lot of crumbled tile and pockmarked concrete. The earth was pitted and scarred, a crazy quilt of of ugly browns and grays and ruins so devastated it was impossible to tell what had stood once upon a time. The sky was sullen and heavy. Lightning flashed in the opaque clouds, a muddy mixture of yellow, gray and brown. There wasn't a single vegetable or water source in sight. But there also weren't any mountains, cliffs, or ravines to get Shepard in trouble. The krogan truck rolled right over the debris in its path. The ride was bumpy, but nothing like the horrifying nightmare journeys Garrus had had on worlds like Casbin, Chasca, and Nodacrux.

Shepard's smirk grew as they drove further without incident. Garrus mentally added it to the list of her expressions that ought to be outlawed and didn't let go of his death grip on the gun controls for a moment.

Naturally, there came a time when Clan Weyrloc had built up a barricade around their base. Didn't want to leave enemies the option of driving in in force. They had to ditch the truck about a klick from the location of the hospital. Garrus slammed his door shut after Mordin got down, his skin already itching in Tuchanka's toxic breeze. Shepard made a face, unhooked her helmet from the back of her hardsuit, and put it on. The wind hissed over the top of the truck and the edges of their armor, but beneath the wind, Garrus could hear footsteps in the distance and deep-throated baying.

"Varren. Guess they know we're here."

"Guess so," Shepard said. She had out her Locust—against fast-moving targets, Shepard would almost always go for a fast fire rate and tech over accuracy. A missed sniper shot against a krogan or a varren could be the difference between completely fine and dismemberment. Looking side to side at Shepard and Solus, Garrus allowed himself a moment to wish they'd brought Grunt along after all. Or Jack or Samara. _All three of us would be much happier keeping enemies at range, and these guys are going to want to get in close. Pretty sure we can handle it, but it's going to be close. What's the deal with the professor's friend? What does he know?_

He crouched behind the wheel of the truck as the first varren came barreling around the corner. Solus's cryo blast hit right before his shot, and the body of the varren shattered off its legs. They fell backward to the ground like props. A krogan yelled, and a vorcha snarled.

The roar of a flamethrower started up behind the barricade. Shepard's wrist flexed, and there was an enormous explosion as a vorcha who thought it was a good idea to go up against them with a fuel tank strapped to his back found out how wrong he was.

They began to press forward, past the barricade and into a downhill lane toward the Weyrloc base. The Blood Pack had defenses set up, heavy cover. It made it hard to pick them off quickly, but it also slowed down the varren and krogan trying to charge at them. Shepard took point down the hill, slipping into cover with the professor and waiting for the varren and krogan charges to bring them out into the open. Garrus hung back, and when Shepard or Solus swung out to fire at advancing enemies and the entrenched Blood Pack popped up to fire, _he_ was ready for _them._ It was just like the simulator at the C-Sec Academy.

"Who the hell are these guys?" a krogan yelled. "What are aliens doing on Tuchanka?"

"Arrgh . . . dying!" a vorcha shrieked, hoisting his shotgun high. Garrus's shot took him right under the left brow bone, and his brain matter exploded outward.

The path to the hospital curved around to the left, deeper into a hill, closer to the safe—or safer—Tuchanka underground. It was slow but steady going, with no real problems. Krogan were big, and flamethrowers were nasty, but one advantage of fighting Blood Pack was their general lack of imagination. No traps, no tricks, just straightforward barricades that could be used against the enemy just as easily, on a grade where they always had the high ground.

Up ahead, a vorcha kept going almost a meter after he died, his forward momentum carrying him on even after eight bullets had perforated his head and throat. The ground here was pitted and muddy—they'd passed the token defenses and had gotten to the place where people were regularly coming and going.

There were four more Blood Pack stationed around the entryway to a hulking, windowless block of cement that Garrus guessed was the hospital they were headed toward. He guessed it was the hospital only because it was the only building in the vicinity; there was no friendly neon sign or ambulance around here to provide a clue. Only a wrecked and gutted tomkah truck lying on its side, smoking slightly. _Relic of the last people to try attacking? That's encouraging._

The last four vorcha wanted to catch them in a crossfire. They were stationed on either side of the entryway behind some last blockades Weyrloc had set up for cover. Unfortunately, before the entryway opened up, there were two cement pillars holding up the hillside. It was easy enough for Garrus, Shepard, and Solus to station themselves there and pick the vorcha off one at a time.

The last one fell in the blood and mud by the door about fifteen minutes after the three of them had gotten out of the Urdnot truck. Garrus straightened and followed Shepard up to the entrance. She stopped by the smoking tomkah for a moment, examined it briefly, unscrewed a piece of salvage from the undercarriage, and clipped it to the back of her belt. She didn't offer an explanation, and Garrus and the professor didn't ask. Out in the field, sometimes random usable parts came in handy.

Garrus waited by the door, and when Shepard nodded, he started the hack. A few seconds later, they were in.

The professor was on edge, Garrus noted. He was cool and detached enough in the lab, but Garrus had noticed the salarian developed close friendships. He often ate meals with the doc and welcomed visits from Goto, and Shepard had been late a few times on her rounds because she'd been talking with Solus. Garrus knew Shepard had been a tech specialist prior to her spec ops training, but he'd still been a bit taken aback by her willingness to spend additional time with a crew member. Solus made friends, and quickly. According to Taylor, the first thing the professor had asked of Shepard, back before he'd joined the _Normandy_ , was for her to rescue a subordinate of his from the plague zone. Now this second favor was in line with the first.

Mordin's worry for his friend was evident in his unusual silence, in the way his eyes darted across the hallway ahead, looking for any sign of the salarian Clan Weyrloc was keeping here. The odds weren't great they'd find him alive, Garrus knew. _Even if we do, he's probably not in the best condition._ Nothing about this hospital looked friendly. The hard rock walls were bare and cold, the lighting harsh and industrial. There was dust and carbon scoring everywhere. From what Garrus knew about krogan medicine, most doctors followed the _suck it up_ philosophy of healing—if a krogan could walk, it was time for him to get his ass out of the hospital. They were big on the strong surviving—less so on little things like hygiene and rest and recuperation.

Still, he could smell cleaning chemicals in the distance. Antiseptic and blood. It was clear this building wasn't a hospital now, but it hadn't been long.

In a way, a krogan hospital was an ideal military base. Mordin summed it up for them. "Repurposed krogan hospital," he said. "Sturdy. Built to withstand punishment."

Garrus gripped his rifle and considered the layout ahead. Honestly, he wasn't looking forward to it. "That's unfortunate. Hospitals aren't fun to fight through." Hospitals had small rooms and tight corners, plenty of room for enemies to hide and hamper movement. If the hospitals were active, there was also the danger of civilian casualties. He remembered one terrible day on the wards when he'd first started out at C-Sec and a perp that had been injured in the arrest tried to escape. _Well. We'll hope the hospital really has been repurposed._

"What is fun to fight through?" Shepard wanted to know.

Garrus considered. "Gardens, electronics shops. Antique stores, but only if they're classy."

Shepard chuckled, but the banter stopped there. There was a body on the floor ahead—a body that shouldn't have been there.

There were probably five humans on Tuchanka at any one point in time. The krogan homeworld was basically the opposite of alien-friendly, and the traders and mercs that were willing to take the risk usually stayed in public areas—ports and markets, mostly. They didn't hang out in secured military bases. The human corpse on the floor wasn't just in the wrong place, he was in the wrong sector of space. He didn't look like he'd been dead long—maybe just a few minutes. He didn't even smell, and the open wound at his wrist was still oozing.

It wasn't hard to guess what had happened. Even krogan didn't tend to leave dead bodies in the halls of where they lived. No, this guy had been a prisoner, and he'd used the security breach the three of them had created on the Weyrloc perimeter to escape. The problem was, he'd already been in such bad shape he'd given out right here. There weren't any bullet wounds on him, but there were enormous, orange-purple growths on temple and torso that didn't look like anything Garrus had ever seen on a healthy human.

Mordin knelt by the corpse. "Dead body, human. Need to take a look. Sores. Tumors. Ligatures showing restraint at wrists and ankles. Track marks for repeated injection sites." He ran down the sorry catalogue without emotion or inflection, but hot anger was rising in Garrus's throat. Looking down at the corpse, he was reminded of Saleon's victims. "Test subject. Victim of experimentation," Mordin concluded.

Shepard's face was unreadable, but all of them knew the game might have just changed. This wasn't just about Mordin's friend, not anymore. Something much bigger was going on here.

* * *

 **A/N: This chapter was originally going to be longer, but it ended up working better to stop here. And you're getting it on an off-day—not Wednesday or Saturday—because I had all but the last five paragraphs written last week and meant to post it on Saturday for you guys but didn't. I know I've slowed way down. I was a little burned out after the Illium arc, and there's been stuff going on. But I'm going to try to do better and get chapters to you a little more regularly.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say.**

 **Best Always,**

 **LMS**


	25. Light-Bringer: Pandora

**Pandora: In Greek mythology, when Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind, the gods punished him, but they needed a way to put humans in their place. Hephaestus created the first human woman, Pandora, who was given gifts of beauty and craft by all the gods and married to the Titan Epimetheus, and as a wedding gift, she was given a special jar. When she opened the jar, a whole bunch of chaos, evil, and disease was released into the world to torment humankind. Horrified, Pandora closed the jar, saving just one entity: hope, which has remained with mortals ever since.**

* * *

XXV

Light-Bringer: Pandora

"Don't suppose there's a way to tell who this poor bastard was." Shepard said in a voice that gave nothing away. She'd taken off her helmet again, but her face was just as unexpressive.

Mordin shook his head. "No tattoos or ID. Maybe slave or prisoner. Maybe merc or pirate. Irrelevant now. Clearly part of krogan tests to cure genophage."

The genophage. Now Garrus understood why Shepard had classified the run. The professor and the friend he wanted rescued had done work on the genophage for the STG. _Probably with Erash and Mierin too; they all knew one another from some top-secret STG project. Could be research, or even maintenance or modification, considering Mordin's qualifications. It's been a thousand years since the implementation of the genophage. That's time enough for the krogan to have started adapting to it._ Mordin's friend wasn't just a salarian on Tuchanka, he was a salarian that had actively worked against the krogan. If Garrus was right about what this was and the krogan learned what that salarian had done, he didn't even want to think about what would happen to the man. _Might have happened already._

The professor was still talking about the human victim. "Humans useful as test subjects. Genetically diverse. Enables exploration of treatment modalities."

Garrus wasn't any scientist, but it sounded like the research here had gotten pretty far. He frowned.

"Experimenting on humans is just sick," Shepard remarked.

Mordin shook his head. "Never used humans myself. Disgusting! Unethical! Sloppy. Used by brute-force researchers, not thinkers. No place in proper science." He took a deep breath. "Krogan use of humans unsurprising."

Shepard shot the professor a sharp look. "You're telling me you never did live-subject testing while developing the new genophage?"

 _That's confirmation on the modification of the disease then._ Garrus looked at Mordin, gauging the professor's reaction to him hearing about this, but Mordin didn't even flinch. "No. Unnecessary. Limited tests to simulations, corpses, clone tissue samples. High-level tests on varren. No tests on species with members capable of calculus. Simple rule. Never broke it."

"Why use humans at all, though?" Shepard asked, looking back at the victim. "Wouldn't the testing work better if they'd used varren, too?"

"Yes," Mordin agreed. "Human experiments strictly high-level concept testing. Native Tuchanka fauna likely used later in development stages. Wise to delay use of varren until necessary. Powerful bite."

"And humans are helpful because . . .?" Shepard persisted.

The professor sighed, as if explaining to an idiot. "More variable. Peaks and valleys. Mutations. Adaptations. Far beyond other life. Makes humans useful test subjects. Larger reactions to smaller stimuli."

Garrus looked back at Shepard. He'd heard in xenostudies about variations in human culture, of course. They hadn't been a spacefaring society long enough to have really homogenized. The Alliance was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to human politics, but they never talked long about human genetics in xenostudies aside from the obvious physical and social indicators. _Warm-blooded, omnivorous bipeds descended from Earthen primates, similar in appearance to the asari but sexually dimorphic, and they give birth to live young and tend to live in family groups. Highly adaptive to a wide range of carbon-based, oxygen-rich worlds. 120-year lifespan, give or take 30 years. As a species, they're considered intelligent and dangerous, aggressive and ambitious, and they earned their place on the Citadel Council barely three decades after they came onto the scene._ That was all anyone ever got. Did salarians often experiment on humans?

"I know we can look much different from each other, but asari have a wide range of skin tones," Shepard was saying.

Mordin shook his head again. "No. Ignore superficial appearance. Down to genetic code. Biotic abilities, intelligence levels. Can look at random asari, krogan, make reasonable guess. Humans too variable to judge. Outliers in all species, of course. Geniuses. Idiots. But human probability curve offers greater overall variety."

Shepard caught Garrus staring. She made a face at him, and Garrus felt his neck heat up. He knew better than to judge an entire species by a single specimen. "Well. Now that you've taught us all that humans are genetic abnormalities." Shepard nodded at the body. "What can you tell about the experiments these guys have done from looking at the body?"

Mordin looked at the corpse for another few moments. "Position of tumors suggest deliberate mutation of adrenal, pineal glands. Modifying hormone levels. Counterattack on glands hit by genophage." He almost smiled. "Clever."

A gleam of interest lit up in Shepard's eye. "Do you think they're getting close to curing the genophage?"

Mordin shrugged. "Can't say. Need more data. Conceptually sound, though. Genophage alters hormone levels, could repair damage with hormonal counterattack."

He stood, dusting his hands off on his lab coat, and Garrus and Shepard stood with him. "Good science or not," Shepard said decisively. "If they're doing experiments like this, we've got two reasons to shut this place down."

Mordin looked sharply at her. "Focus on Maelon," he told her. "Too late to help the dead."

The three of them stood and continued on into the hospital. The hallway curved around to the left. Once again, there was a slight downward grade—a lot of species built up. These days, krogan with any sense built _down_. Clan Weyrloc had kept the walls in good condition, but Garrus spotted drainage leaks in the corners that had left water stains, and some of the flooring had rusted. Garrus got the sense they weren't alone, but there weren't a lot of people here either. Clan Weyrloc definitely wasn't doing as well as Clan Urdnot.

Garrus's feelings were only confirmed when he saw the group in the next room. They all wore Blood Pack colors, but they were half vorcha, and none of them were firing. Still, Garrus's nerves sang as he evaluated the position. _Maybe there aren't a lot of them, but they picked their ground well._ They were surrounded on three sides. A ramp curved around the room, climbing up to another level of the hospital, and there were vorcha and krogan on the ground and on the high ground. He saw flamethrowers and shotguns. But still, nobody shot.

Instead, a belligerent-looking krogan stepped forward and raised his hands over his head. _He's going to make a speech. Tell me he's not going to make a speech._

"I am the speaker for Clan Weyrloc, offworlders!" he bellowed. His voice reverberated off the metal and concrete of the room, and Garrus winced. "You have shed our blood! By rights, you should be dead already! But Weyrloc Guld, the chief of chiefs, has ordered that you be given leave to flee and spread the message of our coming."

Shepard tilted her head. "Sorry we're not dead already," she said politely. "Why are we getting the pass to leave? What does Clan Weyrloc have planned?"

There were excited murmurs all around the room. "If you walk away now, you can tell your children that you saw Clan Weyrloc before our Blood Pack conquered the stars," the speaker told them. "You think the Urdnot impressive? They are pitiful! Weyrloc Guld will destroy them! The salarian will cure the genophage, and Clan Weyrloc will spread across the galaxy in a sea of blood!"

Garrus took a moment to note that there was nothing like a graphic analogy to sell cultish ambition. Mordin zeroed in on the real problem. "Appears they discovered Maelon's work. Unfortunate," he said in an undertone.

Shepard stepped forward. "It doesn't have to happen like this," she told the speaker. "I can understand wanting to cure the genophage—"

The speaker cut her off furiously. "No, human, you understand nothing! You have not seen the piles of children that never lived! The krogan were wronged! We will make it right, and then we will have our revenge!"

"Half the galaxy sees the krogan as victims," Shepard snapped. "If you start a war, you'll lose their support."

Garrus wasn't sure she was right about that—but then again, he'd spent his life around the half that probably wouldn't see things that way. Shepard wasn't the first human he'd met to sympathize with the krogan, and he'd seen enough asari that supported the krogan to know it wasn't just a human perspective, either.

But the krogan sneered at Shepard. "We have the Blood Pack, and we have the salarian. When our clan numbers in the millions, we will not need support. When we cure the genophage, Weyrloc Guld will rule all krogan. The Krogan Rebellions will become the Krogan Empire! The surviving races will frighten their children with tales of what the Blood Pack did to the turians! The asari will scream as their Citadel plunges into the sun! We will keep salarians as slaves and eat their eggs—"

Mordin flinched, and Shepard sighed and raised her pistol. "You talk too much," she said, and fired.

Her shot hit a gas pipe right under the walkway where the speaker stood. Garrus grasped Shepard's strategy instantly. At his side, he signaled Solus to break for an exposed section of piping that would provide minimal cover, and without looking at him directly, the professor signaled an acknowledgment.

The krogan speaker had tensed, but as he realized he hadn't been shot, he guffawed and spread his arms out toward the other members of the Blood Pack around the room. "See? The human cannot hit a simple target!"

Garrus watched the grim twist of Shepard's mouth as she fired again into the gas leak, and the speaker and the two vorcha closest to him went up in a conflagration.

It was just the kind of advantage they needed in this room. As the vorcha least affected by the blast flung himself to the ground and rolled to extinguish the flames, and the two other krogan and the four remaining vorcha shouted in dismay, Mordin sprinted into cover. Shepard blinked out under her tactical cloak. And Garrus charged up the ramp toward two of the vorcha.

He reached the first one a second after his first three-bullet pulse. The bleeding, screaming vorcha was already panicked. He'd just seen the squad leader and one of his friends die in a fiery inferno out of nowhere. The other guy caught in the blast was moaning, trying to stagger to his feet. Garrus's target, blood streaming into his eyes and nose, tried to raise his flamethrower. Garrus reached out and seized the hose to turn the stream onto the unwounded vorcha coming up on the flank of the first. Filthy claws scrabbled at his armor weakly. Garrus released the hose and swung his left elbow around hard into the vorcha's torso.

The vorcha tumbled over the ramp railing as a high-powered rifle cracked on Garrus's flank. Shepard and her Widow were less than three meters away from her target: the vorcha clutching at the blackened, blistered face Garrus had just blasted with a flamethrower. At three meters, Shepard's bullet took the vorcha's hands as well as his head, vaporizing blood, brains, and bone on impact, spattering the wall behind. Up the ramp, the vorcha that had survived Shepard's first attack had stopped moaning, silenced by two well-aimed shots from Mordin's Carnifex.

But the krogan and the vorcha at the top of the ramp were regrouping now. The vorcha were now focusing their fire on the professor, huddled down below. And the krogan had started to charge down the ramp toward Garrus and Shepard. In response to a decade and a half of combat training, Garrus fell back. Turian, salarian, or human, if you weren't a biotic, you didn't meet a krogan charge.

Garrus heard Solus firing back at the vorcha, but even as he did, tech arced out from his omni-tool and slammed the first krogan coming with a cryo blast. He didn't freeze solid, but he tripped and tumbled down the ramp, obstructing the krogan behind him. When Shepard lit him up with an incendiary, he became an excellent, _flaming_ obstacle. Garrus grinned and pulsed the Mattock twice. The first burst hit the screaming krogan on the ground; the second hit the swearing one behind him. Garrus zig-zagged, avoiding two predictable shotgun blasts, and fired again, Shepard's Widow punctuating his shots with a massive exclamation point. The krogan on the ground went still. The krogan still charging fell down.

One of Solus's vorcha was down now, and the professor ran out of cover to come up on their rear. Garrus, Shepard, and Solus advanced up the ramp. Garrus fired one more burst at the krogan, the last vorcha's head exploded, and the hospital was silent once more, except for the hissing out the gas pipe where Shepard had shot the leak. As they passed over the pipe at the top of the ramp, Mordin leaned out over the railing and froze a patch over the break with his omni-tool. _No sense in letting the gas build up._

The new corridor was clear, but Garrus kept his weapon drawn. From the look of this new section of the hospital, he didn't think they'd find any more Weyrloc or Blood Pack in the vicinity. These were hospital rooms, tight and closed off. It'd be smarter to force them into close quarters here, but even though it was better to keep sick krogan confined, healthy krogan didn't like it much.

Mordin nodded at the hallway ahead. "Labs likely through there," he told them. "Can smell antiseptic. Hint of dead flesh."

Sure enough, the rough concrete cells with their heavy, metal security doors slid open looked like workrooms. Garrus saw equally durable-looking hospital beds and consoles on either side of the hallway. Mordin stopped at one. "Active console," he noted. "May contain useful data. One moment."

His fingers flew over the interface, and for about a minute, he didn't say anything. Symbols and readouts passed over the screen too quickly for Garrus to make any sense of them, but Mordin took it all in. "Genetic sequences, hormone mutagens—still steady, protein chains, live tissue, clone tissue." He paused. "Very thorough. Standard treatment vectors. Avoiding scorched-earth amino suppressants to alter hormone levels. Good. Hate to see that."

Shepard had folded her arms. Her mouth was set. "You're pretty casual about the sterility plague you helped develop," she noted.

Mordin glanced at her, then back at the console. "Not developing. Modifying. Much more difficult. Working within confines of existing genophage. A hundred times the complexity. Errors unacceptable. Could cause total sterility, malignant tumors, could even reduce effectiveness. Worse than doing nothing. Had to keep krogan population stable: one in one thousand, perfect target, optimal growth. Like gardening."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You're saying you were working just as hard to keep their population from falling?"

The professor looked back at her then, frowning. "Yes!" he insisted. "Could have eradicated krogan. Not difficult. Increase mutation to degrade genetic structure further. Chose not to! Rachni extinction tragic! Didn't want to repeat! All life precious. Universe demands diversity."

Shepard seemed to accept this. "What was it like working on the genophage modification project?" she asked.

The professor's eyes went out of focus, as if he were seeing things the way they had been so long ago. Salarians didn't experience solipsis the way drell could, but most of them had perfect recall anyway. Maybe in a way he was. "Best years of my life," he told them. "Wake up with ideas, talk over breakfast, experiments all morning. Statistical analysis in afternoon. Run new simulations during dinner. Set data runs to cook overnight. Laughter, ego, argument, passion. Galaxy's biggest problem. Massive resources thrown at us. Got anything we wanted."

"Do you keep in touch with your old team members?" Shepard asked.

"No," Garrus murmured, without thinking.

Shepard looked at him, surprised. "Garrus?"

The professor's eyes filled with something like regret. Garrus looked at him when he answered the implicit question. "People with questions end up on Omega. The professor did. He ran a clinic. Two of his teammates found me instead."

Shepard's gaze cleared. "I remember that." Her eyes moved between Garrus and Mordin, assessing. For once, it wasn't Garrus she was evaluating. Strangely, that didn't seem to make it any better. "You knew your old teammates were working with Garrus, and they knew where you were, but you didn't talk?" she asked Mordin.

The professor's shoulders sagged. "All changed with deployment," he tried to explain. "Made test drop on isolated krogan clan, hit rest of Tuchanka when results were positive. End of project. Separate ways. Watching it end, watching birth rates drop—personal. Private. Not appropriate for team. Even Mierin and Erash—could not reunite for years—even with Garrus."

On Omega, all three of them had tried to make up for what they'd done here. Solus with the clinic, and Erash and Mierin with Garrus, because they'd actually believed Archangel would make Omega a better place. But Omega was the same as it always was, and Erash and Mierin were dead. _Well. At least I can get the bastard that sold them out. Any day now._

Garrus was pulled out of his ruminations by the brief press of a shoulder against his arm. Shepard had stepped forward, ostensibly to get a better view of the readouts on the console. She very carefully didn't look at him, but Garrus saw Mordin watching her. _The professor doesn't miss much. Those measurements and reports probably make about as much sense to Shepard as they do to me._ Sometimes Garrus wondered, between him and Shepard, who was really watching whose back?

And Shepard kept the conversation focused on Mordin, too. "So they joined up with Archangel and you started a clinic. Ever wonder why three of you went to the worst part of the galaxy and tried to make things right after your project?"

Mordin sighed. It was hard to tell with salarians sometimes, but suddenly Garrus remembered the professor was old, probably in the last few years of his life. "Something easy," he answered. "No ethical concerns. Understand rationale for modifying genophage. Right choice. Still . . . hard to sleep some nights," he admitted.

Shepard lifted her chin and forced eye contact with Mordin. "You saw Urdnot, Mordin, and they're doing well," she said bluntly. "How can you agree with using the genophage after seeing that?"

Mordin was irritated by now. "State of Tuchanka not due to genophage," he protested. "Nuclear winter caused by krogan before salarians made first contact. Krogan choices. Refused truce during Krogan Rebellions. Expand after Rachni Wars. Splinter after genophage. Genophage medical, not nuclear. No craters from virus. Damage caused by krogan, not salarians. Not me."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "So say Wrex succeeds in his mission and the krogan band together and form a united government. You'd welcome that?"

Solus was adamant. "Yes! United krogan saved galaxy! Destroyed rachni. Genophage not punishment. Simply . . . alters fertility to correct for removal from hostile environment." He waved his hand, as if searching for a rationale.

Shepard looked around at the crumbling, abandoned hospital. "The effects it did have on Tuchanka are still your responsibility. You upgraded the virus that keeps them in barbarism."

Mordin's gestures got more animated by the moment. "Krogan committed war crimes," he stressed. "Refused to negotiate. Turian defeat not complete. Krogan could have recovered, attacked again. Conventional war too risky. Krogan forces too strong. Genophage was only option. Krogan forced genophage. Us or them. No apologies for winning. Wouldn't have minded peaceful solution."

It was the same thing Garrus had heard all his life, but when he looked at Shepard's expression of disgust, the explanation rang a little hollow. "God," Shepard said. "It sounds like something you memorized from a book. Come on. We're not going to find Maelon staring at consoles."

She led the way out of the room, and Garrus followed her with the professor. Garrus tried to imagine what might be going on in Solus's head and gave it up. He was thrown enough on his own. _I wonder what would happen if you let her at a room full of genophage apologists, scholars, and philosophers for a day or so._ Sometimes it was unbelievable, all the stuff they got up to. Saving sapient species that were supposed to be extinct. Discovering what had happened to the Protheans. Investigating a quarian admiral's death at what could be the beginning of a new war between organics and synthetics. And now—stuck in an old krogan hospital where someone was trying to cure the genophage with probably one of the handful of people in the galaxy that could actually make it work, and Shepard coming at him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

For all Garrus knew, Shepard was right. He'd seen enough desperate krogan mercenaries, and all the hope and community in Urdnot's camp didn't take away from the fact that they were barely hanging on, living in a pile of rubble. The krogan had lived a thousand years under the genophage. Maybe it was time it ended, or at least time for the krogan to start to heal. But it felt dangerous for an out-of-favor human Spectre, a dropout turian, and one or maybe two salarian scientists to decide that.

Mordin stopped in another laboratory, not too far down the hall. There was a corpse on one of the tables. Big. The professor's eyes widened, and his gloved hand came up to touch the body. "Dead krogan," he said very softly. "Female." He gestured at growths on her head and neck, similar to the ones they had seen on the human in the entryway. "Tumors indicate experimentation. No restraint marks. Volunteer. Sterile Weyrloc female willing to risk procedures. Hoped for cure. Pointless. Pointless waste of life."

Garrus looked away from the dead krogan. The helpless anger and grief in Mordin's voice was clear even without subharmonics. _He's an interesting case, the professor. Cool enough to forgive the Illusive Man for sending us into a situation we could all be killed. So logical and pragmatic that after implementing the new genophage he ran off to run a free clinic for all the prostitutes, gangbangers, killers, and debt-dodgers on Omega. A salarian standing here mourning a krogan he didn't even know, who died because of the service he did for his people._

He didn't remark on it, but Shepard did. "I didn't expect you to be disturbed by the sight of a dead krogan."

Garrus didn't know if that was true or not, but it damn sure had the effect she wanted. Mordin actually jumped to round on her. "What? Why?" he demanded. "Because of genophage work? Irrelevant! No! Causative!" His eyes seemed to be dragged back to the krogan on the table. "Never experimented on live krogan, never killed with medicine!" he protested. "Her death not my work . . . only . . . reaction to it!" He waved his hand. "Goal was to stabilize population. Never wanted this. Can see it logically, but still unnecessary, foolish waste of life. Hate to see it!"

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "You've seen things like this before? Did you come to Tuchanka after the project ended?"

Mordin sighed. "Yearly recon missions," he admitted. "Water, tissue samples. Ensure no mistakes. Superiors offered to carry it on. Refused. Need to see it in person. Need to look, need to see, accept it as necessary. See small picture. Remind myself why I run a clinic on Omega." He raised his hand in something like a benediction. "Rest, young mother. Find your gods. Find someplace better."

Shepard blinked, and Garrus realized that as hard as she'd been pushing the professor, one of a handful of people in the galaxy that might actually be able to change things for the krogan, she hadn't known he might be ready to hear her. She'd seen Solus's struggle as well as he did—everyone that wound up on Omega had problems—and seen the opportunity there. But she'd thought she'd have to work a lot harder to get to him.

But most doctors got into the field to save lives, not take them. And even if Solus hadn't already been doubting everything he'd done against the krogan and hating what had happened because of it, Garrus had seen Shepard talk Saren, an indoctrinated, antihuman mass-murderer into listening to her in the middle of a battle, turning on the Reapers, and taking himself out of the equation. She had to know she could talk anyone into just about anything.

"Mordin, are you religious?" Shepard asked in a tone completely different from the confrontational, accusative one she'd been taking throughout their little tour of the labs.

Mordin shrugged. "Genophage modification project altered millions of lives. Then saw results. Ego. Humility. Juxtaposition—frailty of life, size of universe. Explored religions after work completed. Different races. No answers. Many questions."

 _And sometimes, questions are all you get. No answer for how a small group of aliens should get to decide the fate of another species, now or then. No answer for how a perfectly healthy, happy woman with half her life in front of her could contract a disease that leaves her a shadow of herself and ruins the lives of everyone around her, too. No answer to what could drive a man to betray all his friends, good men, to people that came when they weren't ready and slaughtered them. No answer for why you get a second chance—or third, or fourth—when when none of them did._

Looking across at Shepard, Garrus knew he wasn't the only one that could relate to Mordin's problem. The lonely, yearning expression there was enough to make him immediately glance away. He hadn't ever liked seeing mirrors like that even before the Blue Suns shot off his face.

 _There're no answers for her, either. No answer for why a kid's parents would abandon her to be beaten and neglected, bullied and alone, and scrape by the best she can, or how that kid could grow up to be the kind of person that saves the galaxy. No answer to how she could just get spaced or why she would be allowed to come back. No answers at all._

"I know what you mean," Shepard said after a long moment. "How do you deal with your guilty conscience?" she asked Mordin. "The doctor who killed millions." Her words were as hard as they had been before, but the tone and the expression had changed enough that Garrus figured Solus had to know as well as he did now that that Shepard's real goal here wasn't judging so much as it was to offer a challenge.

"Modified genophage project great in scope," Solus explained. "Scientifically brilliant. But . . . ethically difficult. Krogan reaction visceral, tragic. Not guilty, but responsible. Trained as doctor. Genophage affects fertility, doesn't kill!" He didn't take his eyes off the krogan corpse, and he admitted, "Still . . . caused this. Hard to see big picture behind pile of corpses."

Shepard stepped around the table. The professor had to see her too now. "Put away the textbook and the memorized justifications for a moment here, Mordin. Can you really just rationalize it all away? How do _you_ justify it?"

Solus took a deep breath and spread his hands. "Wheel of life. Popular salarian concept. Similar to human Hinduism in focus on reincarnation. Appealing to see life as endless. Fix mistakes in next life. Learn, adapt, improve. Refuse to believe life ends here." He shook his head. "Too wasteful. Have more to offer, mistakes to fix. Cannot end here! Could do so much more!"

Shepard leaned forward over the table. "If you need this much soul-searching to get over it, maybe the genophage was wrong," she said pointedly.

Mordin answered immediately. "Had to be done. Rachni War, Krogan Rebellions, all pointed to krogan aggression. So many simulations, effects of krogan population increase, all pointed to war, extinction. Genophage or genocide. Saved galaxy from krogan. Saved krogan from galaxy." He sounded much less sure of that than he had before, Garrus noted.

"But what if you'd cured the genophage instead?" Shepard challenged him. "Brought hope to the krogan? They'd have rejoiced!"

Mordin's lip curled. "Assumes human reaction," he lectured her. "Krogan response stimulus different. Harsh environment. Take chance to fight, flee! Would have caused chaos on Tuchanka. Victor would have war economy, bloodthirsty army. Galactic expansion only logical outcome. More war. Genophage saved lives war would have ended!"

Shepard folded her arms, unconvinced. "This is the real world, Mordin! You were willing to sterilize a species based on the evidence of a few simulations? You can't possibly have accounted for everything!"

Mordin was looking at her now, caught up in the argument. "Millions of data points! Years of arguments! Countless scenarios! All noted krogan fragmentation as dangerous, no unified culture to support repopulation! Would have been war! Turians and humans destroying krogan utterly! Genophage was better! Saved lives!"

Shepard put her hands on either side of the female krogan's limp arm. "Like hers?" she said quietly.

Garrus regarded the krogan on the table. While it sounded like Mordin's team had considered a possibility a lot of humans and turians wouldn't—that in the event of renewed krogan aggression, the Alliance and the Hierarchy would ally to fight them—he could tell right now they'd missed something. They hadn't counted on Urdnot. They hadn't counted on Wrex. If what Wrex was planning worked, the krogan would end up uniting. The population would grow with or without a cure—more slowly without one, but safety and pride and an organized breeding program would go a long way. All the simulations in the galaxy couldn't account for the difference one individual could make. One krogan leader committed to peace and growth instead of self-destruction. One opinionated human Spectre in the right place, at the right time, with the right person to make a change. One dead research volunteer on a table to be seen.

Mordin turned away. "Worked with available data," he murmured. "Only option. No other possible . . . doesn't matter."

Shepard nodded, and led the way out of the room. Garrus skipped a step to catch up with her. "You're pushing him pretty hard, Shepard," he murmured.

"I know," Shepard said in the same low tone. "But he's brilliant. He can _do_ something about this. But only if he stops trying to feel better about himself on Omega and on suicide missions and starts trying to fix his mistakes in _this_ life. He knows it was a mistake; you know he does. But he's got to admit it first."

That was an angle Garrus hadn't thought of—that the professor was here like Krios was here, a little bit like he was here, because he had to balance the scale, make up for what he'd done. Thinking about it, though, it made a lot of sense. "Was it a mistake, though?" he wondered. "Or did Mordin and the salarians make the hard call for the good of the galaxy?"

Shepard looked him right in the eye. _You want to excuse them like he wants to excuse them_ , that look said. _Because you didn't modify the genophage like Mordin did, but the Hierarchy dropped it in the first place, and you're afraid to step up and say they were wrong._ "You knew two others. You tell me."

Erash and Mierin had both left the STG. Garrus had never asked, but he knew they'd left on bad terms. Because of what they'd done on Tuchanka? "I don't know, Shepard," Garrus sighed. "I don't know."

They'd come to the end of the corridor. On the left, there was a door to another section. Could lead to whatever Weyrloc and Blood Pack that was left. But on the right, there was a locked door. A cell? Garrus glanced at Mordin, wondering if they'd found Maelon or another experiment victim. Shepard just started hacking the door. Garrus took up position facing the other door, just in case anyone still in the hospital decided to attack. _We haven't seen Weyrloc Guld yet. He might be smarter than the rest._

The door behind Garrus opened to reveal a bare cell. Garrus winced. Bare except for a none-too-fresh latrine pit in the corner. He wondered how bad it was for the krogan prisoner.

He saw him out of the corner of his right eye—krogan, male, smaller than most. He blinked up at them from where he sat back on his knees. "You killed the Blood Pack guards," he observed. He sounded drugged.

"Not Blood Pack," Mordin noted, gesturing at the yellow and gray armor on the prisoner. "Not member of Clan Weyrloc. Wrong clan markings."

"I'm an Urdnot scout," the krogan told them. "Weyrloc guards got me. Brought me here."

Garrus remembered the chief scout had said a scout had gone missing over here. Shepard told the prisoner as much. "We've taken out the guards," she said. "Get back to Urdnot."

The krogan shook his head. "I can't," he said heavily. "The Weyrloc did things to me. Drugs. Injections. Said I was sacrificing for the good of all krogan. Experiments to cure the genophage. Everything's blurry. Hard to think. Have to stay."

Shepard sighed. "Mordin, can you get him back on his feet?" she asked. "Stims, maybe? Something to bolster his immune system?"

Mordin's omni-tool came up. The fabrication centers started working, but the scout raised his hands. "You don't understand," he stressed. "I'm not too sick to leave. I have to stay. They're curing the genophage. They're gonna make it all better. They have to keep doing the tests."

Mordin's omni-tool stopped whirring. "Caution, Shepard," he warned. "Patient unstable. Susceptible. Brainwashed."

Garrus tilted his head at Mordin. Honestly, the krogan looked too weak to attack, and he hadn't shown any signs of violence so far. He looked more dizzy and depressed than anything. Shepard squatted down on the concrete and looked the scout in the eye. "Why do you want them to keep doing the tests?" she asked, speaking slowly and clearly.

The scout spread his hands. "This is my fault. I got caught," he explained. "Wasn't strong enough. Not good enough. This is the best I can do. This is all I can do. I'm not big enough to have a real shot with the females. I'll never have kids of my own. But if I help undo the genophage, then I mattered."

It was hard to tell if the scout was repeating what Weyrloc had told him or something he actually believed, Garrus thought. _Self-pity or a genuine sacrifice?_ If it was the latter, it was an almost turian thing for the scout to do, to give his life for the betterment of his people in the best way he could think of. _The problem is he's deluded._

Shepard seemed less impressed by the scout. "Millions of children will be born," she said, keeping her tone even with some effort, it sounded like. "Weyrloc children. They're going to destroy the other clans."

The scout blinked again, and slow, horrified comprehension came over his drugged face as his knowledge of clan politics caught up to the haze to inform him that yes, that was probably exactly what Clan Weyrloc would do if they cured the genophage. "But . . . no. No! They said I was helping Urdnot."

Shepard stood. "If you want to help Urdnot, you need to get back there," she told him. "But it would take a real badass to make it back to camp while injured." The disdainful note in her voice was exactly right, Garrus thought.

The scout clambered to his feet, eyes alight. "I can do it!" he protested.

Even standing, this krogan was shorter than he was, Garrus noted. Shorter than the professor, too. Only a little taller than Shepard, really, but she still seemed to dwarf him. "You?" she sniffed. "I said a badass, not some scout whining like a quarian with a tummy ache."

"I can do it," the scout insisted, balling his fists. Garrus wondered how old he was. "I'm up! And I'm going to the female camp!"

Shepard smiled and nodded, once. "Damn right, you are! Get back there and show them what you're worth! Go! Go!" She waved her hand down the corridor they'd come from, indicating the direction, and like Garrus, she blocked off the room beyond with her body.

The krogan roared in her face, clouded eyes blazing. His legs and arms shook, but there was a determination in him as he stalked out of the cell and down the hall. When he passed Mordin, the professor held out his hand, and a fabricated needle from his omni-tool penetrated down into the krogan's hump behind his back. He didn't seem to feel it and kept moving, and as he moved, his limbs began to steady. He'd make it.

"There's no pep talk like a military pep talk," Garrus observed.

Shepard smirked. "I do my best." The smirk slid off her face as quickly as it had come, and she raised her Locust. "Let's go."

She palmed open the opposite door, and all three of them dodged to the side. Garrus heard them moving on the other side of the room. Paws and claws and armored boots, echoing in a space larger than any they'd seen before.

The hospital opened up here. A rectangular catwalk circled the room. Doors off to the side seemed to lead to storage areas; the real path forward was down, across the room and down a flight of stairs to a lower level.

EDI's voice over the radio broke in suddenly, and Garrus tensed, surprised. "Shepard, I'm detecting crates ahead that are holding unstable materials," the AI informed them. "A misplaced shot could cause a significant explosion."

"'Significant explosion,'" Garrus repeated. "Those have to be some of my favorite words, no matter what language they're in."

Mordin sounded amused. "Indeed. Explosions useful. Blow through krogan armor."

"Sometimes I worry I'm a horrible example," Shepard mused.

"Don't get a big head," Garrus advised. "My love for fiery devastation definitely predated our association."

Then the first shot rang out, along with a vorcha snarl of defiance. "We've been spotted," Shepard warned.

There was a bridge over the drop to the lower level they had to take in order to get to the stairwell. Perfect kill zone, if the Blood Pack had been set up to take advantage. But they'd been either too stupid or too scared to set up a proper ambush in cover on both sides of the bridge. Instead, they were charging in a straight line from the right and across the bridge—right through the middle of the crates EDI had told them were explosive.

 _Sometimes, people really are just too stupid to live._

Garrus fired at the same time Shepard and Solus did.

They hadn't been lucky enough to pick three different targets, but two massive explosions went off like fireworks across the bridge. Vorcha and varren fell, torched, and the smell of burnt fur and flesh filled the air. The krogan kept coming, even as their armor melted and they roared with the pain. There were four of them, carrying shotguns. But in this room, they were still outside of their best range. Garrus, Shepard, and Solus, on the other hand, were right at home, and the trap that should have worked for the Blood Pack became their doom.

Garrus took point through the burning wreckage of the explosive crates, stepping around the outstretched Blood Pack corpses. Behind him, Shepard and Solus checked the storage rooms, looking for holdouts. He heard more feet pounding the corroded steel floors on the level below. He looked down and saw six more heat signatures—two varren, three krogan, and a vorcha, from the shapes.

"Ready to die?" a krogan called up.

 _I don't know. Are you?_ Garrus wondered. He took the stairs, Shepard on his flank, Mordin in the rear.

The varren came first, charging at them, teeth snapping, eyes wild with animal fear and rage. He took one with three shots to the chest and heard Shepard taking out the other. They'd lost valuable moments descending the stairs and shooting the varren, however. Garrus felt two bullets impact on his shields, didn't see any cover ahead.

Then Solus's incendiary rocketed into a crate over a second bridge, and the vorcha shooting at Garrus shrieked as he fell, flaming, down to still a lower level, already minus an arm.

The krogan farthest back roared, lighting up in a nimbus of biotic rage. _Great._ "Tremble and die, offworld scum!" came the furious challenge. "I am Weyrloc Guld, chief of chiefs!"

 _And why should offworld scum respect his authority?_ Garrus wondered. _Ah, well. Logic isn't the strong suit of most gang leaders under devastating attack. Especially krogan gang leaders._ He ducked a biotic throw and extended the movement to fire a concussive blast at the krogan farthest forward, knocking him back. Shepard and the professor followed up with five quick shots to down him, then tech rocketed out from both their omni-tools toward Guld and his last defender, respectively.

The electric, unnatural scent of live biotics mingled with the smell blood and smoke in the air, burning the inside of Garrus's nose. He fired rapid pulses at the krogan charging at the professor, trying to kill the salarian that would stop what Weyrloc's cure for the genophage, hide it where the salarians hid everything they didn't want to get out. Guld fired at Garrus, and there still wasn't any real cover.

Garrus ignored his visor's flashing. **65%. 30%.** Orange blood was congealing over the wounds of the last charging Blood Pack soldier, but not fast enough. As Garrus fired four more bullets into his skull, the light faded from his eyes. His momentum carried him three more steps before he fell at Mordin's feet.

Another shot hit Garrus's shields, and they flickered and died, but Shepard and the professor had been busy. Guld was shouting through a mask of blood, his armor smoking in several places. His biotics were unstable, blooming and firing around him without pattern or purpose. He'd lost control of them in his blood rage. He couldn't reload his weapon. He brandished his shotgun like a club and hurtled across the bridge. Three bullets from an assault rifle, six from an SMG, and two from a pistol hit him at once, and he collapsed on the bridge, dead.

Gazing down at the body of Weyrloc Guld, Garrus didn't fool himself that this would kill the Blood Pack any more than killing Garm on Omega had killed it. These organizations were just too damn massive. But it was another blow. In the larger scheme of things, the death of a major Blood Pack leader was probably inconsequential compared to the genophage work going on here, but it still felt good. He took a moment to enjoy it, then followed Shepard and Solus across the bridge Guld had been guarding, through a door, and down another stairwell.

The cellar of the hospital seemed cleaner. The air didn't smell as much like blood and antiseptic, and Garrus saw more working consoles with every step they took. The experiments may have been conducted upstairs, but here was where Clan Weyrloc had been doing their research. He saw Shepard's fingers twitching around her gun, but she kept her eyes on Mordin and didn't move to take any of the data they saw around them. For a second, Garrus wondered why. The salarians were the best scientists in the galaxy, but they weren't the only ones worth anything. If Shepard wanted something done with the research Clan Weyrloc had done here, she could take it and make it happen. Give it to a private lab, or Clan Urdnot. The genophage cure could move forward more ethically. _Shepard's actually going to try to get the salarians to endorse it—at least this one_ , Garrus realized, with a growing sense of awe. Getting even some of the salarians to back a genophage cure would be more of a coup than the cure itself; it could go a long way toward reconciling the krogan to the rest of the galaxy. _Is it even possible?_ He had no idea.

Eventually, they found Maelon. He was in an airy workroom in front of a concept board. Garrus saw a holo of a krogan DNA strand floating over it, along with several complex equations with characters his translator program couldn't handle. _Salarian science they haven't shared with the Council_.

Garrus guessed the salarian was Maelon from Mordin's reaction. The professor tensed. His jaw dropped open and his gun arm lowered. There was no one else in this room, and a quick scan showed there wasn't anyone else anywhere. They'd cleared the hospital.

From the clearer skin, Maelon was some years younger than the professor. He was thinner than Mordin, too, with dark brown skin, but he wore a labcoat and certainly looked at home down here, and when he saw them, he tensed all over, his eyes narrowed, and his heart rate increased. His whole posture changed to one of guilty defiance, and Garrus knew what had happened before Mordin did.

"Maelon," Mordin murmured. "Alive. Unharmed. No signs of restraint, no evidence of torture. Don't understand."

Solus had lowered his gun, but Shepard kept hers up, and Garrus took his cue from her. There was something about Maelon's eyes he didn't like. "For such a smart man, professor, you always had trouble seeing evidence that disagreed with your preconceptions," Maelon sneered. "How long will it take for you to admit that I'm here because I wish to be here?"

"He wasn't kidnapped," Shepard stated. It was a fact. They all knew it. "He came here voluntarily to cure the genophage."

But Solus exploded. "Impossible!" he cried, arms gesticulating wildly. "Whole team agreed! Project necessary!"

"How was I supposed to disagree with the great Dr. Solus?" Maelon demanded. "I was your student! I looked up to you!"

Solus pointed an accusing finger at the younger salarian. "Experiments performed here. Live subjects, prisoners, torture and executions! Your doing?!"

Maelon spread his arms. "We've already got the blood of millions on our hands, doctor. If it takes a bit more to put things right, I can deal with that."

Shepard stepped forward. "You honestly think the experiments you did here are justified?" she challenged him.

Maelon wouldn't meet her eyes. His gaze kept sliding back to Mordin. "We committed cultural genocide! Nothing I do will ever be justified! The experiments are monstrous, because I was taught to be a monster!"

"Not by Dr. Solus, you weren't," Shepard said at once, so firmly Garrus saw Mordin's eyes soften with gratitude.

"No," Solus agreed. "Never taught you this, Maelon."

Maelon made a hideous face. "So your hands are clean! What does it matter if the ground is stained with the blood of millions? You taught me that the end justified the means. I will undo what we did, professor, the only way I know how!" He gestured at the board, at test tubes on a table. "The krogan would be thriving in a cultural renaissance now had we not decided that this was what they deserved!"

"Inaccurate!" Mordin spat back. "Krogan population resulted in war! Simulations were clear!"

Shepard kept her eyes on Maelon. "What will you think if they were right?" she asked him. "If the genophage is cured and the krogan expand, are you willing to have that on your head?"

Maelon shook his head. "We justified this atrocity by saying the krogan would cause havoc and war if their population recovered. But look at the galaxy! Batarian attacks in the Traverse, geth attacks in the Citadel. Is this a more peaceful universe? The assault on your Eden Prime might never have happened if we had let the krogan recover. We'll never know."

"You're crazy," Garrus said flatly. "You've been sitting on this for years, and you aren't thinking straight." Batarian aggression and the geth alliance with the Reapers had nothing to do with the genophage.

Shepard agreed. "How would a krogan population explosion have done anything to stop Saren and the geth?"

Maelon rolled his eyes at them. "An increased krogan population would have forced the Council to take steps, likely involving colony rights in the Traverse. The turian fleets would be vigilant for any military activity in the area. They might have stopped the geth at Eden Prime!"

"Supposition," Mordin retorted. "Impossible to be certain."

"Don't you see?" Maelon pleaded. "We tried to play God, and we failed! We only made things worse! And I'm going to fix it!"

Shepard flicked the safety back on her pistol and folded her arms. "With Clan Weyrloc?" she asked, sarcasm heavy in her voice. "There's a way to ensure a more peaceful galaxy. And how did you access the genophage data?"

Maelon sighed. "The data was easy to obtain," he told her. "We all still had clearance; we were heroes. All I had to do was ask. As for the Weyrloc, they were the only clan with both the resources and the commitment."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "Not Urdnot?"

"Urdnot Wrex is too soft," Maelon scoffed. "He wasn't willing to do the experiments I needed."

Garrus was surprised and impressed to hear Wrex hadn't been desperate enough to take this crazy salarian up on his plans to cure the genophage if it meant hurting his people and innocent humans. "I knew we liked him for a reason," he remarked.

"It's Urdnot's loss and Weyrloc's gain," Maelon shot back, puffing his chest out. "Their clan will be the first to recover from the crime we committed."

Shepard turned to face Mordin. "Maelon clearly doesn't need rescuing," she said in a disgusted tone. "What do you want to do?"

Garrus had never seen anything like the expression on the professor's face as he looked at the insane scientist, the former student and friend he'd hoped to save. _Another traitor. Maelon took secrets the Union trusted him with, that Mordin trusted him with, and used them to betray everything they did all those years ago in the most unethical way possible. The trouble is, in a way, the professor's wondering if Maelon was right. But he still can't forgive how Maelon did this._

"Have to end this," Mordin murmured.

Maelon's wild eyes suddenly ignited. He snatched a gun up from the table behind him, waving it loosely toward Mordin. "You can't face the truth, can you?" he shouted. "You can't admit that your brilliant mind led you to commit an atrocity!"

Mordin was already in motion. In one brutal, efficient movement, he punched Maelon's weapon away. It fell to the floor and skidded away. Garrus walked around, flipped the weapon up onto his foot and into his off hand. And the professor had pinned Maelon up against his concept board, his arm over Maelon's chest and under his chin. The other hand had a gun to the younger scientist's temple. "Unacceptable experiments!" he summarized. "Unacceptable goals! Won't change. No choice: Have to kill you."

He closed his eyes, Shepard's face contorted, and she stepped forward. "No!" she cried. "You don't!" She took a deep breath. "Mordin, you're not a murderer."

Mordin gasped and fell away from Maelon. The younger scientist, terrified out of his wits, fell sprawling on the ground. "No!" Mordin said. "Not a murderer." He was quiet for a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity. Then he nodded and straightened. "Thank you, Shepard. Finished, Maelon," he told his former pupil. "No Weyrloc left. Project over."

Garrus eyed Maelon. He got it. He knew why Shepard didn't want the professor taking the shot, but politically, it was a big risk letting the salarian go. "What if he talks to more krogan?" he asked. "Tells the public about the modified genophage project?"

Mordin shrugged. "Special Tasks Group good at covering tracks. No proof. Weyrloc willingness to work with salarian unusual. Other krogan will kill him."

"And what if he starts his research back up again?" Shepard asked.

Mordin had moved to the concept board. Maelon staggered to his feet and edged away, keeping his eyes on Garrus. There was a terminal at the base of the concept board that Garrus guessed linked to all the research in the hospital. The professor's hands spread out over the keyboard. "Locking this unit," he said. "Special Tasks Group can cut access to old data. Could start from scratch. Decades of work, though." He looked back over his shoulder at Maelon. "Didn't teach you _everything_ I knew."

Shepard looked across at Garrus and nodded. He lowered his weapon with hers, and she spoke to Maelon. "You heard the professor. Get out before he changes his mind."

Maelon looked furious, lost, and relieved all at once, but Garrus knew he wasn't out of the woods yet. This was still Tuchanka, and Garrus guessed from Shepard and Mordin's tones here that they weren't shooting the guy, but they sure as hell weren't giving him a ride off-world. "Where am I supposed to go, professor?" Maelon asked.

Mordin didn't look at him again but kept shutting down the research. Around the room, terminals were going dead. Out in the hallways, Garrus saw lights going down in the hospital as Solus cut the power. "Don't care," he said. "Try Omega. Can always use another clinic."

Maelon took three steps toward the door. "The krogan didn't deserve what we did to them, professor," he said. "The genophage needs to end!"

Mordin went still. "Not like this," he replied. Maelon's face set, but he turned on his heel and fled. Mordin kept at the terminal. "Apologies, Commander. Misunderstood mission parameters. No kidnapping. My mistake. Thank you."

"It's not a problem, Mordin," Shepard said quietly. "How are you doing?"

Mordin's face twitched. "Should have killed him. Wanted to. Easier than listening. Easier for him, too; experiments indicate how far he's fallen." He bowed his head. "Expected it from krogan. Not one of mine."

Shepard made a face. "Maybe you'll remember that the next time you're discussing the ethics of the genophage."

Mordin's omni-tool came up as the concept board shut down. Garrus saw a single data file hovering there, represented by a glowing string of text running circles around the professor's wrist. Solus watched it, pensive. "Yes. So many variables. Stress responses. Impossible to truly predict. Something to think about. Maelon's research. Only loose end. Could destroy it. Closure. Security." He took a deep breath in through his nose and glanced at Shepard and Garrus. "Still . . . valuable, though."

Garrus's mandibles tightened. There it was: a single, floating file that could change the course of the galaxy. Maelon hadn't been any Mordin Solus. If the professor kept his research, Garrus knew what it could mean. Participating in that genophage modification project hadn't made him crazy, but Garrus guessed everyone who'd been involved had had their regrets. He wondered what Erash and Mierin would think if they were here, what they'd recommend. The truth was, he had no idea. _I never knew a salarian as close with a krogan as Mierin was to Krul. And as much as Erash loved his explosions, and as much as he'd hate to admit it, he was one of the ones that was in it to save as many as he could. But the two of them knew about 'whatever it takes.'_

He knew what Shepard would recommend. He knew what Mordin wanted. But was it right?

' _Right.' When it comes to the genophage, what does that even mean?_

"If you think it could be useful, why not hang on to it?" Shepard said.

Mordin's fingers twitched inside his omni-tool. "Worked for years to create modified genophage," he mused. "Should destroy this. Maelon's work could cure genophage. I don't know. Effects on krogan, effects on galaxy. Too many variables. Too many variables!"

Shepard stepped close to the scientist. "You regret what the krogan have become," she said quietly. "You see the horror of what they did here, but you see the loss, too."

"Wasted potential," Mordin agreed.

Shepard lifted her chin, forcing the professor to meet her eyes. "They don't deserve this Mordin," she said. "Save the data."

Mordin nodded, flexed his hand, and it was done. "Point taken, Shepard. Capturing data. Wiping local copy. Still years away from cure, but closer than starting from scratch." Garrus saw another string of data leave his omni-tool, a virus that would wipe everything on the local terminals as clean as an eggshell. "Done. Ready to go. Ready to be off Tuchanka. Anywhere else. Maybe somewhere sunny," he mused.

Shepard looked at Garrus. "Think the next stop's the Citadel, actually," she said, her face and voice carefully inexpressive. "But we'll be here a couple more days." She shrugged and slugged Mordin lightly in the arm. "Still—no reason for you to hang around. Let's get out of here."

They turned around to start climbing their way back toward the Urdnot truck.

* * *

Unlike Shepard, Garrus didn't often visit the professor's lab. It wasn't just that every time Mordin looked at him he thought of Erash and Mierin. At least, that's what he told himself. He barely understood a tenth of what Mordin got up to. It was another rule from basic: stick to what you're good at, and when you can't help, just stay the hell out of the way.

But you didn't go through something like what they'd faced down in the Weyrloc camp without taking some time to decompress afterward. Upstairs, Garrus guessed Shepard was taking whatever time she needed. She did her best to hide it, but he knew she probably had doubts about what they'd done today. Anyone would, and he hadn't forgotten how it'd been for him on Omega. She'd be up there wondering if leaving Maelon alive would just leave him free to duplicate his sick experiments sometime after the STG surveillance died down. Analyzing all the different ways her decision to spare Maelon's data could go to crap. And she wouldn't breathe a word of that to anyone, because she believed she'd made the best decision she could down there, and when it came out—and it would—she would have to make everyone else believe it too.

She'd talk to Solus later, make sure he had a chance to get whatever he needed to off of his chest. But Mordin deserved a chance to say whatever he needed to say to Garrus, too. Garrus wasn't sure he'd have been allowed along today if Mordin had known the mission parameters going in. He'd told Shepard about his STG work; it was relevant to his qualifications and to why Maelon had been in danger. Garrus hadn't ever needed to know, and the fact he did was a security breach.

It looked like Mordin was researching some armor tech today. A holo of Shepard's breastplate hovered in front of him, and as Garrus watched, Mordin threw out a section to examine the underlay. Behind him, angry seekers bumped against the reinforced glass jar they were trapped in, and beside the jar, Garrus saw a monitor with quad-strand DNA scrolling across the screen.

"Mordin."

"Garrus," Mordin said, without looking up. "How can I help?"

"What happened down there. Are you going to be alright?"

Mordin blinked. "Of course," he said, as if it was obvious. "Maelon safe from attack. Unethical experiments stopped. We do good work."

"I hope so," Garrus said.

Mordin looked up, and his eyes narrowed. "Genophage has not been cured, Garrus. Data merely saved. Leaves possibility open, provides avenues for further research. Doubts?"

Garrus braced himself on the lab table. "I want Shepard to be right," he admitted. "I hope she is. If she pushes this . . ." he took a breath. "I'll back her up. But it's a long shot, Mordin."

Mordin's expression clouded. " _Many_ variables," he repeated. "Some unaccounted for in previous project simulations. Leadership of Urdnot Wrex, beginning of diplomatic union of krogan clans. Saw research station in Urdnot camp? Resurgence of nonmartial science. Agriculture. Support of powerful galactic figures. Shepard may only be first. Needs further study. Possible there is a peaceful path to curing genophage." He shook his head. "Massive shift in galactic paradigm."

Garrus nodded. "About that—what happened down there won't leave the _Normandy_ until you're ready. At least not through my transmitter."

Mordin's eyes warmed, and he smiled. "Would not have thought otherwise. History, mindfulness of security, psychological profile, personal observation—all suggest familiarity with confidential operations, possibly prior to work with Shepard or on Omega. Not in C-Sec. During military career?" He tilted his head at Garrus. Garrus just tilted it back, and Mordin's smile widened. "Tapped for Spectre training," he concluded, as if that settled it. In a way, it did. "Besides," he added. "Shepard would not encourage it."

"She's got your back, professor," Garrus told him. "I know it may not seem like it—"

"On the contrary," Mordin corrected him. "Took time away from mission to rescue nonessential personnel, personal peace of mind only objective. Attitude in Weyrloc base entirely consistent with military background—pushing subordinate to realization of moral, mental, _logical_ weakness. Meant to build up, strengthen, improve! Tough love. Uncomfortable," Mordin remarked, with a wry face, "But appreciated. Offered alternate perspective."

"She does that a lot."

Mordin hummed agreement, typed a correction, and set the fabricator on the table to begin weaving the prospective underlay. "Commander Shepard well known for moral convictions. Respect for life. Diplomacy. Altruism. Spared last rachni queen, despite aggression of insane rachni soldiers and warlike history. Saved Council at cost of much of Third and Fifth Alliance Fleets. Good woman. Good officer, if sometimes illogical." He turned away to examine the Prothean DNA. "Something else on your mind?" he asked.

There hadn't been, but now that he was here, Garrus took a look around. Mordin was a doctor, one of the most brilliant biologists and geneticists in the galaxy. He tapped his fingers on the table, then decided. _Screw professionalism_. "Professor, do you know anything about Corpalis Syndrome?"

Mordin stopped his work at once. His omni-tool came up, and Garrus saw a variant of Doc Chakwas's diagnostic app float up around the professor's wrist. "Ugly disease," he said. "Turian. Similar to but faster acting than human Alzheimer's. Neural degeneration, cognitive degredation, memory loss. Fatal two to three years after appearance of diagnosable symptoms. No known cure." He frowned. "Well outside earliest reported age of onset, Garrus. Have not demonstrated any symptoms. Appear to be in perfect physical health. Cybernetic aural implant functioning properly, scarring healing well. Blood work on file free of disease. Have already forwarded recommendations to Dr. Chakwas for supplements to reduce risks of multiple diseases later in life—" he stopped then. Comprehension dawned on his face, and he shut the diagnostic program off.

"Forgive me," he said. " _Not_ personal complaint. Loved one. Unlikely significant other. Family member. Midlife or later. Turians rarely close to extended family. _Parent_."

"My mother," Garrus confirmed, ignoring the remark about his nonexistent partner. The last thing he needed to do was get involved in a discussion about why Mordin thought he didn't have a girlfriend. "Auralie Vakarian. She was diagnosed two years ago." He swallowed. "They—they don't think she has a lot of time. I didn't think of it until just now, but—your specialty's xenobiology. Do you know something her doctors don't?"

Mordin's face fell. "No," he said in a low voice. Suddenly, his face brightened. He lifted a finger, then snapped. "But in contact with researchers conducting studies. Experimental, but promising." Up came the omni-tool again, and this time, Garrus saw a contact list flying by. Then Mordin stopped. "Cannot guarantee results," he warned. " _Two_ years after diagnosis, unfamiliar with patient—"

"I understand," Garrus rushed to say, trying to wrap his head around the balloon of hope expanding in his chest. _There are researchers, studies, salarian scientists working to beat this thing_. "Can you get her in?"

"Will write recommendation, make introductions, encourage selection for study." He met Garrus's eyes. "If subject and family are amenable to participation."

"I'll call them right away," Garrus promised. "If your friends can help her, we'll do whatever we can to get her to them."

"'Help' subjective with advanced Corpalis," Mordin stressed. "Can perhaps recommend medications, treatments to improve function, _modestly_ increase longevity. Can study progression of disease to add to research for cure. Might be cost-prohibitive." He shrugged. "Vakarian family economic status unknown. Costs of travel, participation unknown."

"Forward me the information," Garrus said. "I'll see my parents and sister get it. Mordin—thank you."

"Happy to help," Mordin told him, already sending files over his omni-tool. "As I said: ugly disease. Glad to promote research to find treatment options. Mutually beneficial. Good for patient, good for researchers. Also personally invested." He stopped typing, and Garrus's omni-tool buzzed. His visor notified him he had a new email with a large attachment, along with contact information. "Assistance appreciated this afternoon, Garrus. Concern afterward as well."

Garrus paused. "You're part of the team, Professor. I hope you don't think I was pumping you for help. It's just—something I've been thinking about. And I was here."

Mordin looked at him in genuine incomprehension. "Mother gravely ill. Natural to consult doctor. Salarian science widely acknowledged to be best in galaxy. Would be more surprised—insulted—if you did not make use of all resources. Shortsighted. _Foolish_."

 _Salarians. Always working all the angles_. Garrus sighed and thanked Mordin again and turned around to leave. He had to make a call.

"Garrus," Mordin called, a note of concern in his voice. Garrus paused in the doorway. "Krogan Rite of Passage tomorrow likely to be extremely dangerous. Urdnot Wrex _powerful_ ally, but other krogan will judge Grunt and alien krannt more harshly. Take care."

"No worries, professor," Garrus told him. "I've got no intention of dying tomorrow. I've got an appointment on the Citadel to keep."

* * *

 **A/N: Leave a review if you've got something to say!**

 **Best Always,**

 **LMS**


	26. Light-Bringer: The Youth

XXVI

Light-Bringer: The Youth

There is a special kind of irritation in being woken up by an overeager adolescent, especially for the insomniac. The dulcet tones of a gravel-voiced juggernaut woke Garrus up the morning after the attack on the krogan hospital. Accompanied as they were by the pounding on the battery door, Garrus was sitting up and lunging for the workbench and a gun before he realized what was happening.

"Garrus!" BANG! BANG! BANG! "Get your ass up! I become Urdnot today!"

Garrus groaned, reached over for his visor, and flipped it on. **500, LT**. The figures glared at him. "Is Gardner even serving breakfast yet?" he called.

He heard the kid laugh at him. "You can't miss one lousy meal? Weak. Grab some protein packs and your guns, and let's go!"

"Is Shepard up yet?"

A long pause. Grunt's voice was muffled on the other side of the door when he spoke again. "She told me to come back in half an hour. Said she'd shoot me if I didn't."

"I should try that line sometime." Garrus swung his feet up out of bed, grabbed his secondary bodysuit, and started peeling out of the one he wore. He'd take it to laundry in the crew quarters before he left the deck.

"Agh, neither one of you could touch me."

Garrus could hardly make out Grunt's voice on the other side of the door. He grinned. "You sure about that, are you?"

"Turian bastard," he heard Grunt mutter. "Half an hour, then. Be ready!"

"Half an hour," Garrus yelled back, as he started strapping on his hardsuit.

* * *

Two hours later—and _after_ breakfast—they were stepping off the shuttle into Urdnot once again. Grunt had grumbled and complained, but his eyes were shining as they walked past Urdnot bonfires toward the camp of the Urdnot shaman.

Just because Grunt had gotten up before the crack of dawn for this didn't mean the other krogan had. As they walked into the camp, Garrus saw most of Urdnot still sleeping, curled around their guns, in armor or under thin, dirty blankets on shelves of rock or in open tents. A few were stirring, though, and as the three of them walked past, Garrus noticed they were getting different looks than they had the day before. A krogan manning one of the cannons shooting pyjaks actually nodded at them.

"Is it just me, or do they like us better today?" Garrus asked in an undertone.

"According to EDI's analysis, with everyone in Weyrloc either crippled or dead, Urdnot's just gotten a whole lot stronger," Shepard told them.

Grunt rolled his eyes, something he'd definitely picked up from the humans on the _Normandy_. "You're warriors worthy of respect, even if you're not krogan. They've heard you helped Urdnot Wrex destroy Saren. They believe it now. We will conquer this Rite of Passage."

Garrus tried not to smile. Here at the heart of Tuchanka, that probably was how it had gone down. _'Commander Shepard, the human that helped Urdnot Wrex destroy the turian asshole that tried to use the krogan. Garrus Vakarian, the turian asshole Wrex didn't kill, because he helped.' Never mind that Wrex was on the_ Normandy _for the Ilos run._ Truth was, Garrus didn't grudge the old warlord the credit on his homeworld; he'd kept them going on Virmire.

They made their way upstairs. This part of the camp looked like Urdnot's luxury quarters, actual rooms, some of them with hangings and rock daises like the one that hosted Wrex's throne that seemed to serve as elevated sleeping platforms. Garrus saw krogan in other colors sleeping here—more ambassadors and visitors from other clans, officials, and the shaman. These were honored guests and leaders in the clan.

They found the shaman by the bones hanging up in his quarters and the incense burning in a clay jar in a corner. Fortunately, it looked like, like the on-duty scouts and supply guards, the shaman was already up and dealing with all the kinds of crap important public figures dealt with. Garrus had never envied his father or the executor.

The Urdnot shaman was arguing with the krogan from the day before, the traditionalist diplomat that had stalked off in a huff. The Urdnot shaman was looking about as annoyed as a krogan could look before things got violent. "You go beyond yourself, Gatatog Uvenk," he growled. "The rites of Urdnot are dominant."

"How do we know it will challenge him?" Uvenk demanded. "He's unnatural. The beasts of the Rite could ignore him like a lump of plastic!"

 _Beasts of the Rite. Well, that's good to know, anyway._ Garrus thought of Tuchanka's native fauna. _Nasty, aggressive predators. Tough. Usually armored with a bite._ He glanced at Shepard—she was prepared for heavy engagement—she had the Widow from the Collector ship and the Cain, which she'd recently upgraded to accommodate a larger charge. He'd done the same, modifying his assault rifle with a program of hers to shoot cryo rounds, useful going up against big enemies likely to get up close, the kind you really wanted to slow down. Grunt was ready for anything. The kid was bouncing up and down.

"They know blood no matter the womb," the exasperated shaman was telling the diplomat. "Your barking does not help your case."

Grunt shoved his way forward. "I'll speak for myself!"

The shaman took in Grunt, looking him up and down and sniffing at him. "This is the tank-bred?" he asked mildly. "It is very lifelike. Smells correct as well." He shot the diplomat a contemptuous glance. "Your protests ring hollow, Uvenk."

"Urdnot Wrex has given us permission to seek clan status for Grunt," Shepard told him.

The shaman seemed unimpressed. "Permission." He scoffed. "That is good enough, if lacking in spirit."

Uvenk clenched his fists. His eyes glittered. _He's an idiot, and no one respects him, but that just makes him more dangerous_. "If this must stand on ritual, then I invoke a denial! My krannt stands against him! He has no one!"

 _He needs a sponsor_ , Garrus realized. _Otherwise this guy can sponsor enemies to keep him out._ Wrex had been pretty smart with the set-up here. He wanted Grunt; anyone that ran with Commander Shepard would be a powerful addition to Clan Urdnot. But bringing in Okeer's test tube baby was risky, untraditional at best, and possibly an insult to Okeer's old enemies. So Wrex wouldn't front the men to bring Grunt into the clan, increasing his liability as well as the risk Urdnot would look weak if Grunt failed. Shepard would have to take the risk of sponsoring Grunt into Urdnot.

The shaman made a noise of disgust. "My patience is tested, but Uvenk invokes correctly," he said. "Grunt, who is your krannt? Your allies willing to kill and die on your behalf?"

Shepard glanced at Garrus. She wouldn't make him stand up with a krogan and face some sort of unknown, deadly test if he didn't want to. But she was going to do it anyway, and she was an idiot if she thought he'd let her do it alone. Garrus nodded. _I'm in._

"Grunt is my crew, our teammate," Shepard told the shaman. "We'll sponsor and stand with him."

The shaman made a face. "Shipmates are not the same thing, but I grant you aliens your simple interpretation."

Uvenk roared, lifting his fists. "Aliens don't know strength! My followers are true krogan! Everything about Grunt—"

Before Garrus could move to stop her, Shepard had stepped forward, caught Uvenk by the collar, sprung up on her toes, and headbutted the windbag— _hard_. Immediately the heat sensor on Garrus's visor blossomed, a red and purple explosion behind Shepard's forehead. He tried not to react to it as Uvenk staggered back and Shepard winced, once. "And Grunt's got a turian and a Spectre with him," she said, her pain only evident in the smallest thread of tension in her voice. She spread her arms in a 'come on' gesture that translated quite well across most bipeds. "You want to see how this goes?"

Grunt laughed aloud, and Uvenk stared at Shepard. "You . . . you dare?" he said in a voice halfway between threat and disbelief. He wasn't just talking about the krogan dominance display, incredible, from his perspective, from such a puny-looking human. Shepard had deliberately represented herself and Garrus as people affiliated with the last enemies to beat the krogan, people who could crush all resistance. _As a claim of Grunt's power, probably the best thing she could say. Less good when it comes to asserting his kroganhood. Krogan-ness?_

But the Urdnot shaman was laughing. He clapped Grunt on the shoulder. "I like this human!" he roared. "She understands!"

 _This human's just bruised her brain_ , Garrus thought, watching the heat pool inside of Shepard's skull and at its base where it attached to her neck.

"I withdraw my denial," Uvenk muttered. "This will be decided elsewhere." He shouldered past Shepard and she watched him go down the stairs without reacting.

"You have provoked them," the shaman told her. "Reason enough for me to like you. They're your problem now."

Shepard jerked her hand at the stairs. "Is he _going_ to be a problem?"

The shaman shrugged. "He is forbidden to interfere. Will he? During the Rite of Passage, you must be ready for anything, Shepard. From what you've shown me, you will not disappoint." He grinned, showing off teeth like tombstones.

Shepard's jaw set. "So tell us how this works."

The shaman shook his head. "For now, know that Grunt will be tested, and that you must adapt."

"Do we need any special equipment?" Shepard asked.

"To begin the Rite, only the candidate and his krannt are required," the shaman told them. "You love battle, don't you, Shepard? The last gasp of a dying opponent? Bring your love of the fight to Grunt's trial, and he will succeed."

Garrus watched Shepard. She kept her face neutral, and he knew what she was thinking. This wouldn't be fun for her. She didn't love battle. For Shepard, it was never about that. Before Alchera, she'd lived for the discovery—that first step on a new planet, the historical find, the experience and understanding you could only get from space travel. Now he didn't know if any of them had anything to _live_ for, but Shepard sure wasn't in it for the fight.

But Garrus knew what it was to love that rush of adrenaline, the five minutes you didn't know if you'd survive the next five, the thrill when it turned out you had. That perfect headshot through the skull of someone you knew should die. Dancing with danger and flirting with death. _Until your clock runs out. Or worse._

It wasn't his main motivation either, but it was there. _I figure between me and Grunt, Shepard should be fine. Because whether she_ likes _it or not, she's damned_ good _at battle._

He eyed the heat readings coming off her head. _Usually not walking with a head injury, though._ They couldn't tell the shaman. He got that. But he'd have to watch her.

"We're ready," Shepard said. "Let's do this."

The shaman clapped his hands together. "Excellent!"

* * *

The shaman wouldn't tell them his name. Apparently it was a krogan thing: the shaman of a clan bore the burdens of his entire people and therefore ceded the rights to whoever he'd been before he became shaman. Shepard made a face, but Grunt nodded thoughtfully as the shaman drove them to the surface again. Garrus sat beside Shepard in the back of the truck and kept his focus on what might be coming.

The shaman was driving them, which meant they weren't supposed to be in control of where they ended up or when they escaped. Shepard could call Niels in an emergency, of course, but if she did that, Grunt would fail his rite. The challenge was on the surface, meaning the environment itself would be a hazard. Looking sideways, Garrus realized Shepard had left her helmet; the space it would usually hook on to the back of her hardsuit when not in use was completely occupied by the Cain and the Widow.

She had her antirad, though. He nodded at it, leaning close. "Will you be alright up here?" He kept his voice low and hoped the shaman wouldn't hear over the rumble of the road.

"I could be good for a couple days, if we don't do anything crazy," Shepard muttered under her breath.

"Well, now you've jinxed it," Garrus breathed. They always did something crazy. "Been nice knowing you, Shepard."

She jostled his arm and leaned forward, trying to see over the console and through the dirty truck windshield as the shaman pointed out features of the landscape to Grunt.

After about forty-five minutes, not too long, but long enough they wouldn't be able to make it back to Urdnot today on their own, the shaman stopped the truck in a ruin. He climbed out and waited for them to come around to the driver's side for him to see them off.

Today, the fuzzy radiance of Aralakh shone through the toxic veil of the krogan homeworld. A hot wind whistled through broken buildings. Garrus saw the remnants of windows, foundations, toppled columns in every direction. Krogan architecture was blocky and brutal, not at all like the quarian ruins they'd seen on Haestrom, but the ruins here seemed centuries older. Despite that, Garrus wondered if this city had still been standing when Wrex had been young, or in his father's day. A cold feeling curled in his gut. Grunt just stood taller, inhaling.

The shaman nodded. "This is Tuchanka's most recent scar, the last surface city to fall in the rebellions." He gestured at a single light on a pedestal in the middle of what had once perhaps been a grand receiving hall. A button. A signal. "The Keystone is at the heart," he told them. "It has survived wars and the passage of centuries. It endures, like the krogan. If you wish to join Clan Urdnot, you must contemplate the Keystone and its trials."

"What'll happen?" Grunt asked. This was his moment.

The shaman shrugged, eyes glittering, and opened the door of the truck. "Who knows? You must adapt. You must thrive no matter the situation. Any true krogan will."

He swung up into the truck, threw it into reverse, and drove away, sending up a cloud of dust that set all three of them coughing. The air of Tuchanka had a taste of ozone and gunpowder. It tasted like death, even without all the dirt in it. Garrus swallowed some water from the canteen he carried on his belt. _I hope contemplating the keystone doesn't take more than today. I don't see any water source nearby._

Grunt had walked over to the Keystone, and Shepard had followed him. Garrus joined them. Grunt stared at the glowing button, and Shepard's lips turned up. "Well?" she encouraged him.

Grunt hit the button, and a krogan voice echoed through speakers Garrus could not see. "First the krogan conquered Tuchanka, and mastered a natural world only we are fit to hold."

A baying howl echoed through the ruins, joined by another, and another, and Garrus realized the Keystone had probably sent out some sort of high frequency signal when they'd pressed it. "Guessing those are the 'beasts of the Rite,'" he murmured.

"Sounds like it," Shepard agreed, drawing her Locust and equipping her cryo program. Garrus did the same with his assault rifle.

With their back to the Keystone, they were coming from the left and the right—from ruins off to the south and a collapsed building to the north. Garrus saw the bulbous eyes in the dark windows of the sunken building first.

"Here they come!" Grunt exulted. "I'm ready!"

A few people on hub worlds had begun keeping varren as pets, and sometimes they were fought or raced in lower-rent sectors. Varren meat was popular with levos, so sometimes they were farmed as well. But mostly, they were just pests. Vicious, temperamental, hard-to-control pests that fought for some of the worst scum in the galaxy when they were tamed and ran in overwhelming, feral packs when they weren't. Kids on the Citadel had to watch out in some of the slums and docking areas. Aria had varren control people along with her vorcha control people, though they weren't as well known.

Tuchanka was their native world.

Garrus took up position on the left. Shepard took up position on the right. And Grunt went wherever the hell he wanted to go. He barreled around their stretch of ruin like a cannonball, blasting varren full in the chest or bowling them into one another.

It was a fast-paced, messy, noisy slaughter. New varren came as fast as they gunned them down. The baying, whimpering, howling, and snarling of the varren became meaningless. All that mattered was the endless flow of action and reaction, scoping the next target and taking the shot, dodging left or right before the snapping, oversized jaws could close. The rhythm of the rifle recoil and stooping to scoop up a heat sink to keep going.

All around, varren slipped in the blood of their brothers and sisters, went down freezing or burning from tech attacks, were shattered by bullets or forward momentum or blunt force trauma. Grunt was yelling about his worthiness across the ruin, grinning like a maniac. Garrus found that he was, too.

Grunt blew off the front, right leg of one. Garrus exploded the head of another. Grunt pounded Garrus on the back and yelled at the poisonous sky as an arc of fire swung out around them toward the ruin and the first dog in the next wave.

It was the biggest pack he'd ever seen—thirty, maybe thirty-five varren, but eventually the flow slowed down and stopped, and behind them, the Keystone gave a sweet little chirp and lit up green again.

Garrus laughed and wiped a streak of varren blood off his assault rifle. "Think that calls the shaman back, or is there more to this little trial?"

Shepard shook her head. "'Trials,' he said. As in more than one. There'll be more."

Grunt punched the Keystone. "Good! I _want_ more!"

The krogan voice rang out from the speakers again. "Then the krogan were lifted to the stars to destroy the fears of a galaxy," he proclaimed. "An enemy only we could chase to their lair!"

In less than a minute, a high-pitched shriek reverberated through the ruin, followed by the sound of heavy, very large wingbeats. "Harvester!" Shepard called. They'd encountered the things before clearing space around Illium on a nonessential mission to foster team cooperation and cohesion. Fortunately enough, Grunt had been with them that day, too—but they'd also had Solus and Massani.

Harvesters looked like pictures of dragons Garrus had seen in human corners of the extranet, with enormous leathery wings, long, serpentine necks, and lots of teeth. They weren't that dangerous themselves. The real trouble with harvesters was how they airlifted in klixen: enormous, aggressive, fire-breathing insects—possibly the larval form of the harvesters—with a distressing tendency to explode when you shot them. Each harvester carried two or three on its back and could fly back to its nest any time for more, and klixen were fire-resistent, heavily armored, and mean.

The harvester landed well out of range in the buildings beyond their position, and it wasn't long before Garrus heard the scrabble of insect claws on stone, as the harvester flew away, and another one flew in on the other side. _We must be near a nest_ , Garrus reflected absently. His gratitude he'd installed Shepard's cryo program on his Vindicator was more to the point.

"Some altitude, you think?" Shepard murmured at his back.

It was a good idea. The klixen didn't look like good climbers, and vertical distance would distance them from the fire breath and the blast when the insects died as well. Garrus fired a concussive shot at the insect closest to them, hurling it back half a meter. Shepard's fire finished it off as Grunt blasted the next insect three times. The resulting explosions as the unstable gases inside the things ignited were messy and violent. Garrus flicked off the heat filter on his visor; the consistent blooms when one of the klixen died would get annoying in a hurry if this attack lasted any time at all.

Grunt covered them as they fell back, picking their way up a ruined wall to a higher position. "Crawlers! Come to your death!" he roared. He dodged past a klixen flame with surprising dexterity and blasted it three times in the face, running toward the break where the next harvester had dipped low.

Garrus, at the top of a column that had collapsed to lean against the ruined wall, with Shepard crouched a little way down on the wall, folded up his Vindicator, took out the Mantis, and went to work. The air took on a sulfurous, burning taste to complement the ozone and gunpowder as klixen exploded left and right. Grunt began to force the insects to the center of the Keystone plaza, using the varren corpses there as obstacles, laughing like a maniac.

The weight of one frozen klixen corpse broke off all its legs. Grunt kicked an oncoming klixen as it died into another, using the gaseous reaction to disorient the new enemy before he gunned it down as well. Garrus made a game of shooting the things, trying to hit each dead in the eye as it approached. Shepard defended their position, aiming at the sensitive underbellies of the klixen, their gaping mouths as their legs scratched helplessly at the steep incline up the ruined wall. She froze the insects coming up behind Grunt on the ground until he could turn around and shoot them with his personalized Claymore. Sometimes smash them with it.

After about fifteen minutes of this, Garrus noticed the harvesters—two or three of them—wheeling overhead, shrieking in rage and confusion. Grunt's boots, spattered in gore, pounded the pavement. He barreled up the wall, past Shepard, up next to Garrus, spread his arms, and roared. He drew his pistol and fired into the sky. "That all you got? Come on! Come on!"

One of the harvesters swerved to avoid a clip to the wing. Garrus contemplated the things, raised his Mantis, and looked through the scope, only for all three harvesters to flap their wings and fly off in formation—driven back to their lair.

Garrus shook his head and smiled. The correspondence between the beasts of the Rite and the Keystone's message was loose, but it was there. The varren—Tuchanka natives, first symbols of the rough, nasty environment all krogan had to deal with from birth. The klixen, also native, but insectoid, reminiscent of the krogan's most famous enemy, the rachni. _Though rachni spit poison, not fire, and can move a little better, for all they don't have organic dropships._

How long had it been? Half an hour? A little longer? Garrus followed Grunt and Shepard down the wall, back to the Keystone. He was surprised at how tired he was. Less so by the warm, fuzzy feelings he had about all the vicious monsters lying dead on the ground. _A long, drawn-out shootout is better than a therapy session._ He looked sideways at Grunt, imagining the restlessness he sometimes felt dialed up to eleven and tossed in with a cocktail of adolescent hormones. "I think I get it," he said, meaning the jitters and blood lust that had been driving the kid crazy for a couple weeks now. "Feeling better?"

Grunt understood at once. He grinned through the soot and blood streaking his face. "Never better, Garrus! Alright, Shepard?"

"Sure," Shepard said, deadpan. She cocked an eyebrow at a disembodied klixen leg. "I'm usually against hunting for sport, but these bastards sort of have it coming, don't they? There'll be more." She nodded at the blinking keystone. "There's a thousand years of krogan history we haven't covered yet."

"It makes sense that krogan teach history with object lessons consisting of enormous, deadly battles," Garrus observed.

"Damn right," Grunt laughed, and pounded the Keystone.

Once again, the krogan voice blared out from the loudspeakers over the torrent of the nuclear winter. "Now, all krogan bear the genophage, our reward, our curse. It is a fight where the only goal is survival!"

This time, apart from the wind, there was no sound. No baying, no scrabble of legs on cement. But again, Garrus felt a signal had gone out. This part would be different. The first two tests were meant for Grunt to show his strength. This one was about survival, to weed out the weak. This one was meant to terrify him, to destroy him if he was unworthy. And what was coming now was bad enough everything else around had fled.

The earth shook, and Shepard's tan skin went gray. "Feel that?" Grunt said quietly, looking around. "Everything is shaking . . ."

"Shit," Shepard whispered, shaking herself. Her eyes were bright and shining, absolutely terrified, and suddenly, Garrus knew. "Shit. Shit. Fucking _hell_!"

Adrenaline started coursing through Garrus at new speeds. His blood was electric as he looked for exits, cover, a better weapon, anything. They were alone on the devastated plain. He could run maybe forty-five kilometers an hour for a short sprint. Shepard would be a little slower, Grunt slower still. The thing headed their way now could move twice that fast for a lot longer. It could take them all out in one shot at a greater range than Shepard's Widow. And the shaman had taken the truck.

Grunt hefted his shotgun. "I'm ready!"

" _No_ , you're _not_!" Shepard shouted, holstering her SMG. Her fingers trembled and scrabbled as she pulled out her Widow. She jerked the gun at the ruined columns and walls around them. "Get into cover, and stay down! Listen to the Keystone! The goal isn't to wipe it out this time; you'll pass if we _survive_." Tentacles erupted on three sides, venomous blue and waving at the clouded, stormy sky.

The thresher maw was hunting, feeling for the prey the Keystone had told it was here. Its skin would feel vibrations in the air, and when it did, it would strike with unbelievable speed for the largest known terrestrial predator in the galaxy. Thresher maws had taken down entire colonies, entire squads of highly trained soldiers. They'd taken out Shepard's unit, early in her career. Fifty Alliance soldiers plus a colony. She'd been the only survivor.

Raw, animal terror was overwhelming Garrus's brain. The primal, prey instinct to kick up his heels and run, stronger than anything he'd experienced in fifteen years. Shepard reached out, and with a grip so tight it shrieked on his armor, she hurled him back into Grunt toward the wall she'd indicated. Grunt's eyes were wide as he realized what they were up against—something that had Commander Shepard in a panic. He found Garrus, and Garrus nodded, and ushered him into the cover Shepard had recommended as she hoisted the Widow high, peering through the scope at the tentacle furthest from them, choosing where the maw would attack. "Alright, come on, you son of a bitch," she breathed, and fired.

The response was immediate. Orange blood spurted as a hole the size of Garrus's head was torn through the tentacle—and it was still whole and waving. Grunt was hurled to his feet in the shockwave as the thresher maw reared up from the earth, shrieking in pain and rage. Acid dripped from a razor-sharp mandible, three times as wide as a tank. It was impossible to tell if those bulbous blue eyes saw them, but its mouth shot open, and an arc of viscous liquid flew toward the place Shepard crouched behind the wall. If it touched her, it would burn through her armor and skin in seconds.

"Look out!"

Shepard had ducked just in time. "No shit!" she screamed. Her voice was almost unrecognizable. "Distract it if you can, but stay behind the stone!" She crept along the wall, changing her position. "God oh God oh God, damn it!" The words were a mantra, spoken under her breath, but the radio picked them up. Garrus heard her inhale. He swung out from cover, aimed, and fired at the same time she did.

His Mantis left a smaller, neater wound than Shepard's Widow, but both shots did what they were intended for. The thresher screamed, and blood showered down from two of its bulbous eyes into the others. It rotated its head, blindly searching for the threat. Grunt had rolled up behind another column and opened fire with his pistol, able to reach the thing when his shotgun wouldn't. His shots hit harmlessly on the thing's armored sides, but they served to confuse it. The earth rumbled again, and the thresher maw dived back into the ground in a geyser of dirt and mud.

Garrus tripped as the earth quaked and rumbled beneath them. "It can't come up through this rock," Shepard yelled at them. "That's why the Keystone's standing! Watch the perimeter!"

A chill swept all through Garrus. In a moment, they could all be dead. If they misjudged the thresher's next attack, it could finish them. It could move over the concrete overland and crush them. Shoot them from an unexpected angle. He saw rock shifting over to the right and shouted, "There!"

"Find cover!" Shepard ordered them, slinging her Widow back over her shoulder and pulling out the Cain—too late. The thresher had heard her voice. She dropped to the ground as acid spewed over her head and spattered, hissing, on the concrete a decimeter away from her foot.

Grunt howled. Moving at a dead run, shotgun in hand again, he fired again and again at the gross, towering body of the thresher. Three shots went wide. A fourth hit an armored segment. The fifth blew off a leg the approximate shape and size of a harpoon. The thresher maw doubled at the site of the wound. Its body came rushing down toward Grunt, but he'd already angled away, back toward cover, roaring his defiance. _Lunatic_. The thought was the merest, incredulous whisper in the back of Garrus's skull as he raised his rifle again from the shadow of the pillar he'd found. All he knew was he had to keep firing, had to keep bouncing the maw's attention away from the others. Just until the time ran out. Just until the shaman came back. _He will, won't he? We just have to survive. Just have to survive._

In the periphery of his vision, he saw Shepard, crouched behind a wall, Cain carefully balanced over the edge. There was a red light tracing from the barrel—the tracking laser, focusing, aiming.

She released the trigger.

A single, twenty-five-gram explosive slug came rocketing out of the barrel, and in less than a second, it was done. The thresher maw went red, yellow, then white in an instant, then blew apart in fragments too small to see. The stormy sky of Tuchanka turned a bright, spring green in the blast, and a wave of heat and radiation swept out from the mushroom-cloud center so intense that Garrus could feel the radiation gel cook right off of his face. And against the glow, there was Shepard. Tears were streaming down her stricken face as she stared at the blast. She didn't care about the radiation. Didn't move to shield herself from the falling blood and ash raining down from the sky. She staggered to her feet and turned, wild-eyed.

She saw Garrus, seemed to register he was alive and in one piece, and her eyes moved past him to Grunt. She walked over to their baby krogan, clasped his arm, and hugged him once, hard.

"Spirits, Shepard," Garrus breathed, as Grunt began to pound Shepard's back, grinning from ear to ear, and she just buckled under the blows—Grunt was too excited to check himself—and took it. Garrus walked up behind Shepard, in front of Grunt. Grunt stiffened, and Garrus thought he'd realized what he was doing, until his nostrils flared. He released Shepard and pulled out his shotgun again.

"We have company! Good. I want more."

Garrus moved Shepard behind him. "You're the bravest person I've ever met or heard of," he murmured to her. She didn't seem to hear him, but her eyes were tracking again, focusing on the krogan squad coming up the hill behind them.

The shaman had warned them the traditionalist, Uvenk, might try to interfere. He had about seven others with him, as far as Garrus could see, all well armed and armored, but none of them had raised their weapons yet. Instead, they were staring at the blast zone ahead, the fragmented rocks and concrete where the thresher maw had been killed, the pools of orange and yellow-green running together to create an ugly brown, the ripples still moving in the air. Three of them muttered something too low to catch.

Uvenk was looking Grunt up and down. "You live," he said. "And you brought down the thresher maw. No one has done that in generations. Urdnot Wrex was the last."

Grunt clenched one fist and gestured with the other hand at Shepard and Garrus. "My krannt gave me strength beyond my genes, which are damn good."

Uvenk pressed his mouth together. "This will cause discussion," he grumbled. "I wonder . . . you say you are pure? No alien meddling in your construction? Just the Warlord Okeer?"

"Okeer distilled the best krogan traits into Grunt," Shepard spoke up, sounding hoarse. She cleared her throat.

Uvenk scowled. "His design is the problem. But not made by aliens, and he is truly powerful. That is a tolerable loophole."

Grunt's hands tightened on his shotgun. "A what?" he growled.

"A reason to accept you," Uvenk clarified. He folded his arms. "You are a mistake," he informed Grunt, "but your potential could tip the current balance of the clans."

 _Because telling someone they shouldn't exist is the best way to get them to join your clan_ , Garrus thought. Sure enough, Grunt flared right up. "You spit on my father's name, on _Shepard_ 's name, but now you stop ranting because I am strong?" he demanded.

Garrus shot a glance at Grunt, surprised, both that Grunt would take offense at Uvenk's insult to Okeer, who he'd never seemed to care much about, and that—judging from his tone—the implied insults to Shepard counted even more. _An hour of fighting monsters in the mud, and suddenly you're more than a parent to a guy_.

"With restrictions," Uvenk stipulated. "You could not breed, of course, or serve on an alien ship." His lip curled over his teeth as he looked at Shepard. "But you'd be clan in name."

Grunt glanced back at Shepard, incredulous. She had a grip on her Locust and looked as tired as Garrus had ever seen her. "You're your own krogan, Grunt," she said quietly. "I'm not going to tell you what to do."

"I don't think you understand," Garrus murmured, as Grunt snorted in disbelief.

"Like I'm leaving your fights, Shepard?" he said. He lifted his shotgun. "I am pure krogan," he declared. "Uvenk, you are the pretender!"

In a second, Uvenk and all his friends had weapons ready. "Your head is valuable," he snarled, "Whether you're alive or dead!"

Grunt lowered his head, ready to charge. "Just try and take it!"

An incendiary from Shepard's omni-tool slammed into the eyes of one of the krogan on the right. Garrus opened fire on the left and dropped into a somersault, falling back to cover. On his flank, he saw Shepard flicker out of view, and he turned his thermal sensor back on to track her. He stayed low. Uvenk and two others were focused on Grunt—almost half of the force Uvenk had brought with him. The problem was, with Shepard faded out, the other five were firing at him, and two of them were moving toward his position. He flagged one's shields going down, saw a burst of fire slam in on another from the right. He took Shieldless, firing two shots in succession. His krogan went down; two others turned on Shepard's position. But she was already gone, moving behind fallen columns and tumbled walls to the rear of the Gatatog soldiers.

Garrus went left, firing as he went, forcing the krogan attention further away from Shepard's position. On his left, Grunt was using the body of one of Uvenk's soldiers as a shield as he charged, firing at Uvenk from beneath the soldier's arms.

One of Garrus's fell, and Garrus turned his fire to another, only to see he hadn't finished the first. Grimacing, spitting out three teeth and a portion of his jaw, the krogan rose, clawing at the remnants of a wall in front of him. But one of his buddies was too close, brandishing his shotgun. The closest cover was still too far. Garrus swung his rifle and fired again. His shots missed, but Shepard's didn't.

The unmistakable _crack!_ of the Widow split the air, and suddenly krogan blood, hot, wet, and sticky, was flying in Garrus's face. " _Nice_!" Garrus shouted, swiping his gauntlet over his face to get it out of his eyes. He vaulted over the wall behind him and lined up another shot. But Shepard's usual sarcastic retort never came.

He saw her heat signature, slim and straight among the bulky krogan silhouettes and running a good bit hotter, behind a ruined doorway almost directly opposite him, at the enemy's rear. _Leaning_ against the ruined doorway opposite him, breathing too heavily. She curled her omni-tool up toward her chest, and on the left, Uvenk roared and whirled as the last of his biotic barrier went down. He threw his fist in the air, and an orb of crackling biotic energy hurtled toward Shepard. She threw herself to her left and kissed the pavement behind another wall.

"Fight like a warrior!" Uvenk roared, and Garrus knew she'd gone dark again. One of Uvenk's three surviving soldiers wheeled around to form up on his flank. Grunt was grappling with the krogan with the bleeding jaw. Garrus lined up a shot at the only guy still charging him. Fired once. Twice. He twisted his wrist, taking out the shields of the only guy that still had them as Grunt returned his attention to Uvenk and the guy on his flank.

Uvenk roared again as an incendiary slammed him from Garrus's right and his armor began to melt onto his body. His krannt fired at Grunt, panic in his eyes as the adolescent krogan came at him like the proverbial unstoppable force. His shot hit, and Garrus saw Grunt's shields flicker out. Grunt's eyes narrowed. His first two shots hit his enemy in the throat. His third move wasn't a shot at all, but an armored elbow through the gaping hole he'd just shot, ripping through bronchi, vocal cords, and esophagus, tearing them raggedly above the krogan's breastplate. "I am krogan!" he screamed in Uvenk's face. It was a fact as true as mass or gravity.

 _Damn, am I glad he's on our side_ , Garrus thought idly, as he took three more shots at the guy still taking pistol shots from the ruins and saw him fall back to the ground. Garrus looked for Shepard in his periphery, saw her heat signature coming back up on his flank. _Slower than usual_. As he clocked her, he watched the red-and-yellow outline of her foot catch on a rock. She pitched forward, and Garrus reached out into what his right eye insisted was empty air and wrapped his hand around an armored elbow. She twisted violently out of his grasp, both of her arms swinging back in a particular way. Garrus ducked, but then she caught herself before she brought the butt of the Widow around into his head. She relaxed, crouching next to him at the wall, and flickered back into being. Her face was red in a way he'd seen once before, and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. The gel on her hair had burned off, and curls were springing out of her bun around her face.

Meters away, Grunt was fighting Uvenk, too close for either Garrus or Shepard to get a clear shot in. One of Uvenk's eyes was ruined. A bloody scratch ran down his face as he tried to bring his pistol around to fire. But as they watched, Grunt's boot swung up and planted in Uvenk's chest. Armor shrieked on armor, and Uvenk stumbled back. Three shots sounded at once. Garrus's, from an awkward angle, sent Uvenk's pistol—and his hand—flying off behind Grunt, Shepard and Grunt's hit the former ambassador's head, and it burst in a pulpy mess back from his body.

Grunt gazed down at the ruin of his enemy for about a second, then huffed. He stooped to smear the blood on his shotgun over a fallen krogan's armor and stood.

He walked back over to Garrus and Shepard and nodded once. "Uvenk is meat. Let's signal at the Keystone and get out of here. Leave him to rot."

It was a moment before Shepard seemed to react. Garrus guessed shooting a thresher maw less than a klick away with the Cain on Tuchanka counted as _something crazy_ , because now he was sure she was burning, like Miranda on Haestrom. What was worse, though, was that visible tremors were going through her every two or three seconds, and her eyes had gone bright, glassy, and unfocused again. But when Garrus jerked his head toward Grunt, heading back toward the Keystone, she swallowed and fell into step behind him.

* * *

The shaman brought the truck back within five minutes. He was beaming as they opened the doors and climbed back inside. "You have passed the Rite of Passage," he boomed at Grunt, in the gunner's seat. "Earning the honor of clan and name. Many survive, but it has been years since a thresher maw fell! Your names shall live in glory!"

"Even mine?" Garrus said, trying to keep the sarcasm within a respectful range.

The shaman huffed, though, and it sounded something like a laugh. "Even yours," he said.

Garrus let the Grunt and the shaman rhapsodize about the fight on the way back—how it had felt to stand atop a pile of varren corpses and roar at those who would challenge them; the sound of the harvester screeching in the air beneath the tortured sky; the quaking of the ground beneath the thresher maw's wrath, still puny compared to theirs. Garrus kept an eye on Shepard. Her jaw was clenched, her eyes tightly focused on the truck door. She applied a layer of antirad over her face and neck without a word, raised an eyebrow at Garrus without moving her eyes and handed the tube over. He dabbed a bit on to make her feel better. It probably would be good for him, but he wasn't going to burn like she was. Every minute they rumbled over the road the burn looked worse.

He saw her swallow reflexively four or five times, but she didn't speak, kept her face blank and expressionless, while her fists clenched so tightly around the oh-shit handle Garrus could hear her armor creaking, while there was a little vibration from her seat every few seconds that had nothing to do with the rubble on the road.

Finally, they pulled underground, and the shaman brought the truck to a stop a way down an underground road. He shut down the vehicle, and they all climbed out. The shaman trudged around the truck to stand in front of Grunt. "Grunt, you are Urdnot!" he announced. "You may now own property, join the army, and apply to serve under a battlemaster."

Grunt shook his head. "Shepard is my battlemaster," he said firmly. "She has no match."

The shaman bowed his head, a gesture he somehow extended to Shepard. "Understood. Congratulations, Urdnot Grunt. Come! Your clan will wish to meet you."

Shepard spoke up for the first time in almost twenty minutes. "You go on ahead, Grunt. I'll catch up in a minute."

Garrus waved a hand at Grunt and the shaman. "Yeah, me too." Grunt regarded them a moment, then shrugged. He let the shaman swing an arm around his shoulders and walked off to meet his clan.

* * *

 **A/N: Probably one of Beth Shepard's biggest personal triumphs in the series. For a description of the event that triggered her this chapter, check out Chapter Four of The Disaster Zone:** _ **Soldier**_ **, "Akuze." Those of you reading this story along with Disaster Zone:** _ **Resurrection**_ **, which also takes place during ME2, after this chapter, you'll want to go read Chapter Five of that fic, "Of Maws and Men," for Shepard's perspective on the immediate aftermath of what happened here.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	27. Light-Bringer: The Sage

XXVII

Light-Bringer: The Sage

The second the shaman and Grunt had moved around the bend to the camp, Shepard collapsed against the wheel of the tomkah. Her hand came up to cover her face, then her face went slack. She jolted up and staggered, away from the truck, away from the path.

She fell to her hands and knees and vomited. The sour, acidic smell was immediate, mixed with the iron scent of human blood. Garrus took two steps toward her, afraid she'd sustained some internal injury, before he saw the blood was coming from her mouth, from sores in her tongue and cheek she must have torn with her teeth, staving off her panic attack until the krogan had gone.

 _You do what you have to to keep the confidence of the men up, but_ Shepard _—_ Her arms shuddered. She was too weak to keep holding herself up. She was going to fall.

Garrus caught her around her waist before he thought about it, pulling her away. "Hey, hey!"

She hadn't been ready, and she stumbled again. Garrus tightened his hold and her hands came up to brace against his shoulders. His visor registered her heart pounding, in full fight-or-flight panic mode as she let the force of everything that had just happened crash down on her. The temperature gauge said she was also running too hot, probably from the radiation burn. But as he watched, her readout spiked .25 more degrees. Shepard's lips were parted. The sick smell was heavy on her breath, and her eyes were wide with confusion as she looked at him. Her gloved fingers curled on his shoulders.

And he was holding her waist.

Garrus inhaled sharply, raised his hands, and took three steps back away from her. When it looked like she wasn't going to fall again or punch him out, he let himself relax, a little. He forced a laugh. "Well. I knew it was going to be bad, but I can't say I was expecting that—"

Awkward moment past, Shepard proceeded to lose her mind.

"Probably a mixture of the concussion and the fact that we just fought a fucking thresher maw on foot!" she snapped, wiping her mouth furiously with her gauntlet. Her intermittent tremors had become violent shaking now. She was breathing far too quickly. "I hate those things! I hate them!"

Thinking rapidly, Garrus handed her his canteen. Cool water wouldn't work as well as a blanket, but it still might serve to ground her in the present, and it would help with the taste in Shepard's mouth. She took the canteen blindly, drank, swished some more water around in her mouth, and spat it out on the ground. She handed the canteen back to him and walked away, pacing back and forth.

Garrus kept his voice light and level. "Teenage krogan just can't go out to the bar and get drunk with the rest of the galaxy when they come of age. The party's no good at all unless a thresher maw's spewing acid at you."

It was no good. Shepard's hands came up to cover her ears, but she wasn't blocking him out. Her fingers knotted in her hair, her eyes screwed shut, and she doubled over at the waist. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

Garrus was in front of her again in a second. He grabbed her wrists, pressing harder than he wanted to. "Hey! Stay with me!" he ordered her. Her eyes flew open, and once again, she wasn't seeing him. He knew what she was seeing.

Akuze. Most people would hope they never had to face down a thresher maw on foot once, but Shepard had done it before. Her unit had gone to investigate the disappearance of a human colony and had been completely taken out by a nest that contained not one, not two, but three or more of those monsters. Cerberus had been experimenting with them. The experiment had gone wrong. Shepard hadn't been the only survivor, but she'd thought so for years, and the only other guy that had made it out was arguably insane after what they'd gone through and what he'd endured afterward. It was a miracle Shepard wasn't. Reading in between the lines of her file, it was clear she'd been grounded, relegated to a desk job as a burnout, a walking casualty, before Anderson had recruited her for spec ops a few months later. Garrus had seen evidence before that she hadn't gotten out without a few mental scars: when they'd run into one of the Cerberus scientists that had engineered the attack and her fellow survivor, and vestiges whenever they'd encountered thresher maws in the Mako. But never like this.

But as she looked at him, her eyes refocused, and almost immediately his visor tracked her heart rate slowing. He didn't fit into the picture in her head. He hadn't been there that day, so just by looking at her, just by talking to her, he was pulling her back to the present. Probably the touch, too, he thought, as her hands clenched around his and he realized that, hardly thinking about it, he had been massaging the flexible underlay over her palms with his thumbs. "We're fine now. It's over," he murmured. "Damn, Shepard. Was it because we were on the ground this time?"

She didn't answer. Garrus waited, watching her breathing deepen and her heart rate fall through his visor. Finally, she nodded. "I think so," she told him. "All the times we ran into one of those things before, we were in the Mako. Big fucking gun and tank armor aside, I had a map with topography and life sign readings that told me we might run into a thresher maw. I mean, the shaman told us to be prepared for anything. And Tuchanka—maybe I should have expected it." She sighed and shook her head. "But I didn't. And when that thing just erupted from the ground like that—it was just like I was back there, all over again."

Garrus released her hands and stepped back again. "Well. Not quite. There was just one this time."

This time Shepard laughed, and if there was an edge of hysteria to the laughter, at least it was a laugh. "Just one! As if that's not enough!"

"I don't think you had an M-920 Cain on Akuze, either. Unless I've been wildly misinformed."

Shepard wiped some sweat off her brow with a gauntlet. "Did you see it go up?"

"The _Normandy_ probably saw it go up from orbit, Shepard," Garrus promised.

Shepard's face fell, and she shuddered one more time. "And yet I'm still not sure it's dead enough. They never feel dead enough."

"Trust me: Miranda and all her scientists couldn't resurrect that monster. Not even if Mordin helped. It's over."

Shepard nodded, straightened. "Okay. You're right. I'm sorry."

Garrus shook his head at her. He was probably going to have nightmares for a week as it was. He tried to imagine three of them—more—descending on a sleeping, unprepared camp. He couldn't manage that, but Wrex had been disgusted enough about the trap Cerberus had laid for Admiral Kohoku's squad that he could imagine _that_ —the overturned tank, the outstretched bodies—broken and dismembered on a hill. "You don't have to apologize, Shepard."

Shepard made a face. "And you didn't have to stay behind when Grunt and the shaman left for the celebration. I appreciate it, Garrus."

Garrus caught her eye. "Because a turian alone in a krogan camp is going to go over so well."

Shepard chuckled again. "Mordin was smart to hitch the shuttle back to the _Normandy_ when he did," she said. "Might've been better to keep you off the ground team altogether for the last couple days, now you mention it. Tuchanka's not much safer than a quarantine zone for a plague that kills aliens."

She started walking toward the Urdnot camp, and Garrus fell in step with her. "I wanted to go in there with you."

"When there were four other humans on the team?" she demanded. She reached out and shoved him lightly. "Idiot. We didn't know Mordin had developed a cure. You know what your problem is, Vakarian? You're spoiled."

"Admit it, Shepard," Garrus laughed. "Part of you has just loved dragging a turian and a salarian around on Tuchanka and making the krogan like it."

Shepard tried to keep her expression stern, but her eyes danced, and the corner of her mouth twitched. Garrus waved his talon under her nose. "Aha!"

She laughed again. "A big part. The krogan need to broaden their minds. It's good for them!" She glanced at Garrus and smiled wider. "Or maybe you're right, and I'm just an obnoxious asshole."

Garrus pretended to think about it. "I'd say about 30 percent social reformer, 70 percent obnoxious asshole."

Shepard threw up her hands. "Aww, come on! You're not going to give me any more credit than that?"

Garrus grinned. "You _headbutted_ Uvenk. Tell me you didn't do it just to see the look on his face. I dare you."

Shepard grimaced and rolled her head from side to side. "Not my smartest move. Cerberus upgrades or not, humans aren't designed to headbutt krogan."

Garrus checked his thermal overlay again. There was more heat around her face in general than usual, looking yellow now instead of orange-red, but he also saw heat concentrations at the base of her skull and behind her forehead. It couldn't be blood in her brain; she'd be a lot worse off if that was it, but it still looked like she'd shaken herself up pretty good. "No kidding. Concussion, you said?"

"Pretty sure," Shepard answered, massaging her neck. "Might've wrenched my spine too." She didn't sound too worried about it, but if she was mentioning it at all, Garrus knew she had to be feeling it.

"Hmm. You were moving pretty well in the fight back there, but I've seen you do that with two knife wounds and a bullet in you, when you need to lead the team." Garrus remembered Feros. Shepard had deliberately held back to avoid injuring the colonists affected by the thorian spores. They hadn't been as generous with her. He remembered the medi-gel shining over the blood, her drawn face and tight jaw. After the fight with the thorian, too, he and Kaidan hadn't been in great shape, either, and Doc Chakwas had chewed them all out that day. "We should hail the _Normandy_. Get you back to Doctor Chakwas." _At least_ I _don't have to deal with her today._ Doc Chakwas's lectures were legendary.

Shepard jostled him with her shoulder. "C'mon, Garrus. How many times are we going to get the chance to attend a real krogan party?"

"Do we _want_ to?" Garrus wondered.

Shepard tilted her head, conceding the point. "Probably not, but Grunt will want his krannt there. And I have a few words to say to Wrex, too."

Of course, Wrex would have known about the thresher maw. Garrus almost laughed. "I'll bet you do."

* * *

Grunt caught sight of them when they entered the camp. "Battlemaster!" he called. "Garrus!" A cheer rose up from the rowdy group already clustered around the juvenile. Two krogan had stripped down to their bodysuits for a wrestling match that looked much friendlier than any krogan fight Garrus had ever seen. He spotted a few jugs of ryncol, too.

Still, across the camp, on-duty scouts kept watch. When Garrus asked Grunt's new clanmates about it, they explained that Wrex wasn't about to have his clan caught off guard by attacking rivals. The shockwave from the exploding thresher maw had been felt for kilometers around. If their rivals didn't try and take advantage, Urdnot would be insulted. The implication would be they weren't _worth_ fighting. They were expecting a couple of feints at their borders before the end of the rotation.

Grunt's new friends urged him to stay, help them shove the interlopers back in line, show them what he could do. Grunt grinned and chugged his ryncol like a pro—he'd gotten over howling about the taste before they got there, Urdnot Serc informed Garrus. "Soon," Grunt promised. "Shepard's got bigger battles for us to fight. Enemies abducting entire colonies without a trace, until _we_ found it. We're going to hunt the Collectors through the Omega-4 relay—go where no one has ever gone before, destroy the Collectors, and get all the humans back."

"Sure you want this squirt along for that, Shepard?" one of the older ones asked. "Sounds like you might need a more experienced warrior. I'd be willing to help you out, even if it meant looking at your ugly faces every day. For the right price, anyway."

Grunt smirked. " _You_ want to go thresher maw hunting with her to prove your worth, old man?"

The krogan looked annoyed. "If I hadn't felt the shockwave myself, kid . . ." Grunt had another drink. Some ryncol slopped down his chin. The krogan growled, then punched Grunt in a friendly sort of way. Grunt punched him back. Krogan culture wasn't complicated.

There was some good-natured ribbing about Shepard being pretty tough for a lily-skinned alien about as big as a pyjak, some less good-natured cracks about Garrus helping Grunt get in good with the females instead of strapping him to a table and sterilizing him. But no one made a move to hurt or challenge them. Wrex's people now seemed to find them more funny than anything.

Shepard played around with the shopkeeper's varren, told Grunt's friends about some of the scarier fauna back on Earth—while Grunt was most interested in their marine life, Garrus thought the number of venomous reptiles sounded terrifying. Eventually, Shepard laughed and headed up the camp toward Wrex's fire. Garrus didn't mind staying behind. One of the off-duty scouts, Serc, was talking about how they'd calibrated artillery, at least fifty years out of date, to pinpoint pyjaks on the fly. It only took Grunt showing the old scout one of the mods Garrus had set his Claymore up with to get them to let him take a look at the works and algorithms.

Serc walked back from the shards of three exploded, empty ryncol jugs. He hefted Grunt's Claymore in his arms and handed it back to the kid. "This isn't bad work, turian," he conceded. "Usually you have to give up a lot accuracy for sheer power to explode whatever idiot's in your face, but this little piece can kill better at a longer range than you'd expect."

"Little piece," Grunt muttered, with a fond look at the monster shotgun that could break Massani's arm to fire. "Like to see what you have that's better."

"So, you're the gun man. Guess that's a reason to keep you around." Urdnot Kradok was only a couple of decades older than Grunt's apparent age, and you could tell. _Older krogan want to kill everything because they're bored, or angry. Younger krogan want to kill everything because they're curious or eager to prove themselves. They're all destructive bastards, but the flavor's different._

"I know how to shoot a gun straight," Garrus agreed, examining the mounted gun. "I know people better at the technical aspects. This targeting matrix—were the parts scavenged from other manufacturers or did you alter them yourselves to improve the lag?"

The shopkeeper, Ratch, grinned. "Maybe you've got the tech on your fancy alien ship to alter parts whenever you feel like it, but on Tuchanka, we have to work with what we can find." He shrugged. "Or loot of someone's body, anyway. But the real question is: can you shoot it?"

"A contest!" Grunt roared. Garrus buckled as a fully armored krogan tricep fell down like a hammer across his shoulders. Unfortunately, the armor hadn't contained the smell of varren guts, Cain explosion, and krogan sweat. It made for an interesting combination. "I bet I can hit more of those pyjak things with this Claymore than he can with that gun!"

Garrus eyed the mounted gun with some regret. "As fun as that sounds, that doesn't sound like the best idea, Grunt. Not right now, anyway." Grunt's eyes were unfocused, and he was swaying a bit, and from the smell of his breath, if another horde of klixen invaded Urdnot right now, Grunt would be as likely to go up in flames as they'd be. He glanced at Serc, who seemed to have some clout here. "You'll want to save your ammo for when the other clans come to visit."

"Aaagh, you're no fun," Grunt complained, shoving him away.

Garrus did his best not to faceplant in front of the nice warriors that didn't want to kill him anymore.

"If the _Normandy_ docks here again sometime we're all sober and Urdnot isn't expecting a border trespass, I'll take you up on that contest then. Or, next time Shepard takes us out for team bonding, we can keep a headshot tally."

Grunt guffawed and flexed his hands, each about the size of a shovel. "Yeah. You want to wrestle sometime?" _Sarcasm. Something else he picked up from the humans. Or, maybe it was me._ He nodded at the mounted gun. "Think I'll wait until you're using that piece of junk."

Kradok beat his hand over Grunt's shoulder. "Come on! You can take him!"

Grunt hoisted his shotgun up. "This is a great gun," he said. "Good upgrades." He waved his hand at Garrus's rifle. "But you haven't seen him shoot that thingy. Rifle. Whatever."

Serc eyed the Mantis thoughtfully. "The mounted gun may be a scavenged piece of crap, but that peashooter's got nothing on _our_ guns."

"What have you got?" Grunt asked with interest.

Garrus sighed and clapped Grunt on the back. "Later, Grunt." He'd seen krogan guns, and he'd bet every credit he had that his rifles could blow holes just as satisfying into an enemy with better accuracy and at a much greater range than whatever they had in stock.

"Yeah, yeah, later," Grunt agreed, heading off with his friends. Probably to shoot more empty ryncol jugs. Maybe some interlopers from other clans. With any luck, he wouldn't shoot his eye out. _Even if he does, it'll grow back in a few days. Call it another rite of passage._

Garrus walked up the hill toward Wrex and Shepard. Wrex and Shepard were sitting around the krogan's bonfire talking. "Doesn't that mean he should be taking care of me?" Shepard was asking in a light, joking tone.

Wrex broke out laughing, slapping his knee in appreciation. "Well said, Shepard!" He saw Garrus then, and his eyes glinted in the firelight. "Then again, you've got the turian for that, don't you?"

He'd been behind Shepard. He swung around her now to perch on a boulder near Wrex. "Got the turian for what now?" he asked, pretending he hadn't heard. He unscrewed the lid of his canteen and took a drink.

Shepard sprang up with a cry. "Garrus! Have you been drinking from that all this time?"

Garrus looked at her. "Well, I thought it might be a bad idea to drink the ryncol, given what happened to _you_ the last time you tried it."

Wrex chuckled. "Shepard tried ryncol? And she's still standing?"

Garrus grinned at the Urdnot chief, keeping Shepard in his periphery. "She wasn't after she tried it. Passed out on the floor of a bathroom in the Citadel. Kasumi told me—that's another of the crew, Wrex. Apparently, they drew on her face. Wish I'd been there. This was before I'd joined up."

His visor picked up Shepard's blush, but she was still upset for some reason. "The canteen, Garrus!" she pressed him. "You aren't sick?"

This didn't make sense, Garrus thought. She seemed genuinely alarmed. "What? Why would I get sick?"

"I was talking to a groundskeeper on the Citadel," Shepard explained. "Asking about fish on the Presidium for a krogan in the wards," she waved her hand, like she was running out of time. "Long story. Anyway, he told me how important it was to purify the drinking water on the Citadel—how if a turian or quarian gets contaminated with levo bacteria, they can die! And I didn't think! I'm so sorry! We should get you back to the _Normandy_."

Suddenly, Garrus got it, and he started to smile. "What? Because you borrowed my canteen earlier? Shepard, that kind of reaction to levo contamination only happens when someone has a severe allergy and goes into anaphylactic shock—it'd be like a human allergy to . . ." he searched for an appropriate analogy and remembered a sign he'd seen at a fast-food kiosk on the Citadel once. "Peanuts. That's a thing, right?"

Shepard's panic had begun to dissipate, and Garrus lost the struggle not to laugh as she stumbled over her words. "Uh . . . yeah. You mean—"

The funniest thing was, it hadn't even been the first time he'd shared a drinking vessel with Shepard, Garrus thought. She'd been a little drunk at the time and from the sound of it hadn't heard how severe chirality allergies could be yet, but it was still a little late for her to freak out now. "I'm not allergic, Shepard," he told her. "I thought you knew. Remember back on the _SR-1_? The last night before you left?"

She sat down again. "Oh. You gave me your canteen that time, too, didn't you?" she recalled. "Um. Okay." She was blushing harder than ever, visible on more than just his visor now, even under her radiation burn. Even if it was just for the logical lapse, it was funny.

" _Okay_ ," Garrus teased her. Funny, too, how a stupid, unnecessary, minor freakout could make him want to smile and keep smiling until he looked stupider than she felt right now.

Wrex had been cooking dinner in the coals of his bonfire. He plucked the bone—probably varren—out of the flames, ripped a bite off with his teeth, chewed, and swallowed. "Well. Aren't you two cute? _You_ couldn't do much better, Garrus," he said with a nod, "but Shepard might consider settling down with a nice krogan instead. Like that asari that just moved in—Ereba. Smart girl."

Garrus froze, but Shepard scoffed. "Settle down? Me? Have we met? 'Hi, I'm Commander Shepard,'" she said, taking on another voice that Garrus guessed was supposed to be her 'speed-dating' voice. "'Badass N7, first human Spectre, currently employed by a bunch of racist terrorists on a _suicide mission_ to save the human colonies in the Terminus. How do you feel about zombies? Let me tell you about the time a bunch of mad scientists brought me back from the dead! I enjoy long walks in the galaxy's brightest centers of culture. Hope you don't mind if I bring along my rifle! Or the mercs that will be shooting at me. Let's talk about marriage and kids.'"

Unsure if he felt relieved or disappointed Shepard had sidestepped Wrex's insinuations entirely, Garrus still couldn't hold back a laugh. "Um, Shepard? You realize that long shootouts through city centers are _exactly_ what krogan look for in a relationship, right?"

 _And quite a lot of turians_. _You take 'Spectre,' 'suicide mission,' and that last bit from her little profile and put it with a picture of any turian or asari on an extranet dating site, and she'd be beating them away with a stick. Probably get more than a few hits as is, even with the Relay-314 resentment._

But Wrex's shit-eating grin could've cracked his face wide open. Shepard groaned, bringing her hands up to cover her face. "Krogan. You're all insane."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Wrex drawled. "Of course, once you go krogan, you never go back."

Shepard rubbed her eyes. They really needed to get her back to the _Normandy_ , Garrus thought, celebration or not. She was tired, burned, and mildly concussed. She'd faced her worst nightmares today and come out on top, but it couldn't have been easy. She needed Dr. Chakwas and a good night's sleep. Or five. But she'd run herself into the ground before she complained. "As fun as that sounds, I think I'll still pass," she told Wrex. "It's not just krogan. I don't fraternize, Wrex."

Her eyes drifted away from the krogan chief and met Garrus's for a moment before they fell again. "I mean, a fling every now and then, a one-night stand? Sure. Everybody has needs. But never when things might get serious. Things always get messy when feelings are involved, and sooner or later, someone's bound to get hurt. Given the way my life works? Probably sooner."

Shepard wasn't joking anymore. _And she isn't just talking to Wrex, either._ But there were shades of meaning in her flat, human voice he couldn't work out— _Explanation? Justification? Apology? Warning?_

He had a gut feeling she was talking to herself as much as to him or Wrex, and telling each of them something different. To Wrex, she was saying—nicely— _'Butt out. Don't push.'_ That was obvious enough. But the use of _fraternize_ , given the rest of the speech, was interesting.

 _To say the least. Has she ever broken Alliance regs concerning fraternization?_ It almost sounded like she had. And like fraternization didn't mean the same thing to her as he'd always thought it meant to the rest of the Alliance. There was a definite boundary there—he got that much. But if he wasn't translating tone and nonverbals wrong, and she was talking to all three of them, what was she telling herself? What was she telling Garrus? And what did she want him to hear?

He wondered exactly what Shepard's boundaries were.

Wrex was watching her carefully. "Hard way to live, Shepard."

Garrus picked up a stick and poked the fire, just to see the sparks fly. "Hmm. She does have a point. Relationships in the military are hard work, especially when you're on a suicide mission. Well. It's just another thing you can lose, isn't it? On the other hand, sometimes on a suicide mission, it helps to have a reason to fight, something more than 'we need to beat the bad guys.'"

He kept his eyes on the fire. _Keep it casual, Vakarian. Hypothetical. This isn't the right time, and it's not the right place._ Of course, Shepard was pretty much the reason he was still going already. Sometimes, late at night, caught in one of the masochistic, depressive spirals that came along with general insomnia, Garrus couldn't help thinking about where he'd be if he'd somehow made it out of Sidonis's death trap without her, without that reason to stay sane and alive, for even just a little while longer.

But Shepard laughed. Usually, Shepard's laugh was one of the best sounds in the galaxy. Except at times like this, when it was turned inside out into one of the worst. "Honestly? I just think I'm lucky my bad guys really do need to be beat, Garrus," she said. "I didn't get a lot of choice about whether or not I was going to fight them this time around. Never signed up with Cerberus. But then, there's not a lot left outside them for me, either, anymore. If there ever was." She was silent for a long time.

Garrus thought of what T'Soni had said on Illium. _You might think after everything you've lost, there's nothing else you can lose. It wasn't true when you went to Omega, and it's even less true now._ She hadn't been wrong. He didn't have a lot, but off the _Normandy_ , he had a life and an identity. Not much of either, true, but something. Shepard, though—now she was what Cerberus had made her, what they expected her to be, and neither of those things were things she had chosen. Off the _Normandy_ , he wasn't sure there was anywhere she'd feel she could go.

Looking at her now, Garrus felt the same anger he'd felt at her memorial service two years ago when he'd realized almost everyone there was mourning a hero: a uniform instead of a person, that even the shipmates that had called themselves her friends had only the slightest sketch of who she was—a hometown, a hairstyle, a preferred weapon, and the bullet points on the public record. She had deserved better than that. She still did.

"Well, you're always welcome on Tuchanka," Wrex told her. "It's a pile of rubble, but it's _our_ pile."

It wasn't an offer the krogan made to a lot of people, and Shepard seemed to know it. "Thanks, Wrex."

"Sure you won't stick around a few days?" Wrex asked. "Baby pyjak could have some fun as the first krogan in a generation to kill a thresher maw at his Rite. As his krannt, you'd receive honors, too. Even you, Garrus."

Garrus looked at Shepard, willing her to refuse. She probably needed a few days' rest, but he'd just as soon they took it on the Citadel. Grunt was solid, and there was nothing standing in the way of his pursuit of Sidonis. Not anymore. Shepard spoke slowly: "Wrex, I'd love to. I really would. I can't tell you how much fun it'd be if the worst things I had to deal with for a few days were thieving pyjaks and krogan encroaching on Urdnot's borders. But I have to take care of my team. They're going into a suicide mission. The least I can do for them all is make sure all their loose ends are tied up." Her hands flexed, gripping her knees. She wouldn't look at him.

The edge of doubt gnawing at Garrus's gut was becoming familiar. He thought of Shepard's hand on Lawson's arm in the airport in Nos Astra, how she'd spoken up before Solus could shoot Maelon in Weyrloc's hospital, and again he wondered just how far he could push her.

On the edge of the fire, Garrus heard a call, two or three voices complaining. Eventually everybody got tired of being worshipped and wanted their real friends around, and Grunt had come back to find them. He staggered up Wrex's mound, grinning. "Shepard! Garrus!" he slurred. "What are you doing here? The party's down there!"

Shepard stood and dusted herself off. "Not anymore, it's not, big guy. It's time to go."

Wrex scowled. "Is it really?"

Garrus stood too, and clapped their little krogan protégé on the shoulder. "Trust me, you'll want to get there before the hangover hits." He shot a glance at Shepard. "Though— _we_ won't want you there when the hangover hits. Maybe we should leave him."

Grunt shook him off and raised his fists over his head. "I am krogan! Hangovers have no power over me!"

Wrex stood to see them off. "Can see you don't let him out much, Shepard," he laughed. "How much have you had, whelp?"

Shepard was signaling Niels for the pickup. "Too much." She swung her arm around Grunt's back. She couldn't take his weight, but she was a good height to serve as a crutch for the kid and more than capable of steering him in the right direction. Fortunately, he didn't fight her. "Let's go, buddy. Come on."

"Today was great," Grunt sighed happily. "Do you remember when you shot that thresher maw? And when we tore Uvenk in half?"

"I remember," Shepard answered, pushing Grunt by Wrex. As they passed, she clasped the old warlord's arm.

Garrus started to follow them back toward the landing area to wait for the shuttle, but Wrex called him back. "Garrus."

Garrus paused and turned to face the old warlord. "We've probably got a few minutes before the shuttle gets here. Need something?"

Wrex jerked his head toward the exit to the shuttle port, where Shepard was walking Grunt away, talking softly with the inebriated juvenile. "That twiggy little human's done more for the krogan in two years than anyone else has in a thousand," he stated. His voice was a low rumble. "She's more family to me than my blood ever was. She killed a thresher maw on foot today. You taking care of her?"

It was the question everyone seemed to be asking him these days, whether they framed it as a question or not. _Are you taking care of Shepard?_ If that ended up being his place in the galaxy, it was better than he deserved, Garrus thought. _The guy who looks out for Commander Shepard._ Not the legend. Not the hero. But the person who made sure she could be.

He met Wrex's eyes square on. "As long as she lets me, and maybe when she doesn't."

"Good," Wrex said emphatically. "Everybody needs a krannt. Shepard's krannt for everybody on the _Normandy_. A few people off it. She doesn't let anybody be that for her. Except you." He looked back at Garrus, his expression unreadable. "Started to see it toward the end of the hunt for Saren. Now you're back with her. Even on Tuchanka." His eyes narrowed. "All that crap she said before. Don't let it get to you."

 _Did Shepard say something, maybe before I got here?_ Garrus just managed to squash the impulse to ask aloud, and instead, folding his arms and injecting as much humor into his voice as he could, he asked, "Wrex, are you actually trying to give me relationship advice?"

Wrex scowled at him. "Don't make me regret it."

Garrus shook his head and forced a laugh. "I thought you were kidding earlier. Shepard and I—it's not like that."

Wrex held his eye, looking smarter and more cynical than any krogan had a right to. "Mmm. Maybe not. Yet. Maybe you want it to be." His nostrils flared. "Maybe you both do. There's not a warrior or warlord alive like her, Garrus. Not on Tuchanka or anywhere else. If she figures stuff out and decides she wants you, don't screw it up. If not, stick with her anyway." He nodded decisively, like he'd done his familial duty for the day.

"I'll probably follow Shepard until we both die or she tells me to leave," Garrus admitted. _Never mind the former is probably happening in a few weeks, tops._ "Whatever she wants, and whatever happens." He tilted his head at Wrex. "Can you give the 'don't screw it up' speech to someone who _isn't_ dating your friend?" he wondered aloud.

"Garrus? You staying on Tuchanka after all?" Shepard called from across the camp. "Get your butt over here, and help me with Grunt!"

Wrex grinned. "When it's you two, I can," he said. "Get out of here. Your commander's calling you."

Garrus rolled his eyes and waved, unsure if he was waving Wrex off or waving goodbye. He jogged down from the fire. There was a drunken juvenile krogan to get aboard a shuttle and to his bunk on the _Normandy_. Shepard had a concussion. There was no telling how she'd react when he finally tracked down Sidonis and meted out justice for ten friends betrayed. No way to know what was really going on in her head in regard to the two of them—whatever Wrex thought he had seen the past two days, the only times Garrus had observed anything, Shepard had been worked up about thresher maws or the return of the Reapers.

But impending suicide mission, drunken krogan, uncertain future and all, jogging up to Shepard felt like going home, so Wrex's little speech was right on the mark, Garrus admitted. He took a look at Shepard's weary, pained expression, at the smile she forced for him, and took Grunt's mumbling, half-asleep mass from her shoulders as the engines of the Hammerhead roared overhead. _Whatever this is, whatever it turns into, don't screw it up._

* * *

 **A/N: Ugh. End-of-year crunch. I've had like 90 percent of this chapter written for weeks. But I finished it today. Hope to get Chapter 28 to you soon as well. For those of you reading along with or going back to** _ **Disaster Zone: Resurrection**_ **, this chapter is more or less concurrent with Chapter 5 in that story: "Of Maws and Men."**

 **Best Always,**

 **LMS**


	28. Priorities: Assassination 101

XXVIII

Priorities: Assassination 101

"Can I go now, Mom?" Shepard asked, annoyed, wincing as Doctor Chakwas shone a light into both her eyes.

Doctor Chakwas threw a stress ball at the irate woman sitting on her cot, and Shepard snagged it out of the air, threw it up again, caught it behind her back, and tossed it to Garrus. He caught it in his turn. "Looks like she's up to speed again to me, doc."

"And of course, you have no ulterior motives at all to hope that is the case," the doctor retorted. Seeing Shepard's glare, she relented. "Alright. The symptoms are gone, and reflexes are as good as ever. I'm clearing you for active duty again, Commander, but I want you back in the med bay tomorrow for evaluation, and don't go head-butting any krogan on the Citadel."

"I make no promises," Shepard deadpanned. The doctor hit her in the arm with her datapad. "Okay! No repeat performances."

"Remember to keep applying the aloe vera and the antirad treatment I gave you for those burns," Doctor Chakwas reminded her.

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Don't think I'll forget. I've already made a memo to apologize to every person I've ever teased for a sunburn." She made a face, wrinkling the reddened skin of her face, and winced again. She slid off the table. "Garrus, let Krios know we're moving out in twenty," she said.

Garrus glanced at her, surprised, but shrugged. He didn't care who came along to track down Sidonis, and Krios's contacts and experience could come in handy. All that mattered was that he took the shot.

"Try not to start a shootout in the center of galactic civilization this time," the doctor called after them.

"I make no promises," Shepard called back again as they walked out of the med bay. She tried to grin, but the grin fell short as she looked at Garrus. This time, she wasn't joking. It had been a day and a half since Tuchanka. They'd arrived at the Citadel. And someone was definitely going to die.

"You haven't had a sunburn?" Garrus asked idly as he walked with Shepard back toward the elevator. Krios had his quarters in life support, right across the hall.

"Once or twice," Shepard admitted. "Not as bad as this. Sunburns usually are worse for humans with lighter skin." She examined the tan backs of her unburnt hands. "Lawson's probably been sunburnt several times; a flaw in her 'perfect' genetic structure. Without antirad and attention, radiation damage, solar or otherwise, can cause some serious problems."

"A lot of aliens on Palaven wear radiation suits outside," Garrus mused. "I guess turians have an advantage there."

"Less on the swimming or cold-weather fronts, though," Shepard retorted good-naturedly.

Garrus bumped her shoulder with his as they rounded the corner to the elevator. "See you in the shuttle bay."

She nodded and stepped through the elevator doors, heading for her cabin to gear up.

Garrus buzzed life support and heard a muffled invitation to come in. He entered to see Thane sitting at a table that had been set up in the back of the room. It was the first time he'd been inside life support since Krios had joined the crew. A bunk as spartan as his own was set up by the back wall. The machinery dominated the left wall, but the rest of the room Krios had converted into his own personal armory. Garrus stared. More than half a dozen guns were set up on mounted glass displays. Ariake, Sirta, Haliat, Armax. Even Rosenkov Materials. The amount of killing power in Krios's room made Garrus's fingers twitch. "Nice digs," he said mildly.

"The accommodations are sufficient, but I take it you mean the weapons," Krios said. His face was completely expressionless, but there was a trace of humor in his raspy voice.

"Shepard wants you for the ground team," Garrus told him. "Twenty minutes."

"Yes," Thane responded. "Thank you. You will be accompanying us?" Despite the inflection, Garrus could tell it wasn't really a question.

Garrus frowned. He'd thought it was the other way around, but the drell seemed like he'd expected a summons. "I've got some business on the Citadel. Shepard's helping me out."

"Then that's something we have in common," Thane said, rising with a liquid grace that didn't seem to fit the dying man he said he was. Casually, he examined the weapons on his shelves, and after a moment's consideration, picked up a lightweight pistol and a Viper rifle. He clipped them to preexisting magnetic holsters on his leather suit. "Shall we?"

Garrus followed Krios out of life support toward the elevator. Krios had business on the Citadel like Mordin had had business on Tuchanka, it seemed. Krios accompanied him to the armory without a word as Garrus wondered what his objective was. Shepard wouldn't put him off. Not again.

 _Shepard has her own priorities_ , a voice in his head sneered. _And they don't involve helping you kill Lantar Sidonis, no matter how much he deserves it._

Garrus glanced at Thane. He didn't see how Shepard could be any more comfortable with any private business the assassin had.

* * *

Despite Garrus's curiosity, no one seemed particularly talkative when they met Shepard and Niels down in the shuttle bay. Krios answered Niels's greeting with a single word.

Niels either didn't catch the mood or ignored it—Garrus was never sure which. He'd been grateful for the shuttle pilot's special brand of determined friendliness more than once, but it could occasionally get annoying. "Any big plans for the surface, Commander? Matthews is hoping we'll get another shore leave in the next couple days—a chance to scout out some of the Consort's past clients."

Shepard's mouth quirked up. "There's a better chance he'll get a poetry reading, dinner, or a therapy session out of his appointment with her in a couple months than there is that he'll get laid. Might end up with one of her attendants instead, too. I've met the Consort. I guess never knowing whether you might get lucky is part of the draw, and she's gracious enough, but I never got the hype."

 _That_ was one he'd never heard before. Garrus was completely distracted. He stared. "You had an audience with the Consort," He shook his head. "Of course you did."

"She was having some problems with a high-profile client she rejected," Shepard shrugged. "She asked me to help sort them out. I never found out why she wanted me—that was before I'd become a Spectre. Right before we met, actually, Garrus."

"So, no. You didn't have an audience with the Consort. _She_ asked to see _you_. Why am I not surprised?" Garrus tried hard to hold on to ' _I never got the hype.'_ But the image of the most sophisticated and desired woman on the Citadel _seeking out_ Shepard's company kept intruding. _Before she became a Spectre, because she's just that good, and of course the Consort knew it._

 _Don't know if I'm more turned on or threatened._

The words kept coming out of his mouth without permission. " _You_ got lucky, didn't you?"

He wanted to take it back as soon as he asked. Krios, across from him, looked extremely amused, and he could hear Niels chuckling in the cockpit, but Shepard didn't bat an eye at the question. "Could have, maybe." She made a face. "She's very touchy. But no. After I helped her, she shrunk my head free of charge—and without asking, gave me a keychain, and told me to leave. She sent me a message a while back wishing us good luck on our mission. Friendly for someone on the Citadel." She raised an eyebrow at him. "Why? Did you ever make an appointment?"

Pausing only to note that Shepard had misunderstood him, that the others probably had as well— _there's_ that _at least_ —Garrus scoffed. "On a C-Sec salary? You're kidding. I spent more time on the Presidium with you than I did in five years before you got there." He looked at the display screen on the wall, showing the rapidly approaching arrivals dock on Zakera Ward as an overlay of gold and brown outlines. If Sidonis was still on the Citadel, he'd be in the Wards somewhere, in among the organized crime and the dregs of the galaxy that was civilized space's more expensive mirror of Omega. Fade definitely worked the Wards. They had a different kind of criminal on the Presidium.

"No Presidium today," Shepard said. "At least I don't think so. No shore leave either," she added to Niels. "We might end up leaving here in a hurry. Technically, we're not supposed to be here at all while we're with Cerberus."

But they wouldn't stop her: that was the important thing. No one stopped a Spectre. Now that rumors of Shepard's survival had started leaking out—a couple fictionalized vids, a news story in a backwater human syndicate—it was too messy for the turian, asari, and salarian councilors to execute or fire her. Shepard still had too many supporters, and there wasn't sufficient cause. Even the average guy on the street would start wondering what the Council's real agenda was if they got rid of the woman that had saved their lives and was working to save underdog colonies from the Collectors.

Honestly, if it weren't _for_ Shepard, he wouldn't _need_ Shepard there when he killed Sidonis. But Citadel law wouldn't excuse him for shooting a man who'd committed his crime on Omega, wouldn't trust he would get what was coming to him once they'd passed through the Omega-4 relay. So if C-Sec got him before he made it back to the _Normandy_ — _unlikely, really, but it could happen—_ and Garrus was going to be of any use to Shepard past today, he wanted Shepard there.

Niels pulled into a shuttle docking port and opened the door. "Later, Commander, Garrus. Thane," He nodded at the drell as Krios followed them off the shuttle.

Customs on Zakera Ward was similar to customs on the other four wards on the Citadel. They'd tightened security since Saren's attack—now anyone coming in went through a full body scan and an identity check. But there were holes, as Sidonis had proved and Krios noticed right away. He hadn't said a word since the docking bay on the _Normandy_ , but his mouth tightened as he eyed the cameras, the dual complaint lines, the weapons detectors that didn't scan for plastic weapons. "You'd think Citadel Security would be the tightest in the galaxy," he said mildly.

Garrus sighed as they took their place in the line to go through the scanner. "I know C-Sec too well to believe that's true."

"I see no fewer than fourteen fatal flaws a skilled assassin could exploit," Thane told him. "Eight of them existed when I was here ten years ago."

"You wouldn't mind writing a report for our friend here, would you?" Shepard asked him. "Could help to thank him for the information we're about to ask him for."

"The C-Sec captain of the ward, yes?" Thane mused. "I would not. However, there may be reasons to keep some of the information to ourselves. There are times one must circumvent security."

Shepard tilted her head, considering this. She walked through the scanner. Cameras and 3-D imaging software logged her identity for the computers, including her weapons clearances. Garrus and Thane followed her without incident.

"You've kept up C-Sec contacts?" Garrus asked as he followed her.

Shepard shook her head. "I was dead, remember? This is a new guy. Met him when C-Sec had to officially declare me _not_ dead last time I was here. He's been helpful enough. If you know someone better, though—"

"Probably not the best idea," Garrus admitted. "By the time I left, they weren't too fond of me around here, and I worked Kithoi, anyway."

Shepard turned the corner and led him into what looked a lot like the chief office on the ward. The steps, glasswork, and reach of the department all looked big and important enough. And the officers looked stressed enough. All around, Garrus saw faces like he'd known for years. Humans—more than there used to be, asari, turians, and salarians in pressed uniforms with regulation weapons and shadows under their eyes, all thinner than they ought to be and most with a mug of coffee or ariita in their hand. Overworked, underpaid, and restricted by enough red tape to build their own skyscraper. "Working Citadel Security is a terrible job," Garrus muttered. "If it's not skilled assassins slipping through the cracks, it's political bureaucracy stopping you from doing your work. I thought it might be interesting to come back here, see what's changed. But it's just the same."

An asari officer overheard him and gave him a nasty glare. Garrus gave her a big, fake smile. Not in the least intimidated by the scarring—which he had to admit was refreshing, she made a crude gesture in his direction, but as she walked away staring at a case file, he saw her shoulders slump.

Shepard had led them right to the captain's office. She didn't stop at a front desk. She didn't need an appointment. _Another advantage of traveling with a Spectre._ The office was modest—not too many personal touches. An engraved emblem of the captain's rank on the front window of his office, but when they went inside, Garrus saw a cycling holo of a human woman and a boy on the desk. A gap-toothed kid on a bike. The kid, older, and a woman sitting on a bench eating hot dogs in what looked like an Earthen city. The woman and the man behind the desk at some sort of awards ceremony.

He was human, not young but still in good physical condition, with a strong, square jaw and a full head of graying fair hair. He wore his uniform like former military, pressed and creased and spotless, and the ring on his hand said he'd been married according to Western Earthen traditions.

He'd been studying a file when they entered, but looked up immediately. "Shepard. You're back. Heard they'd reinstated you as a Spectre."

Shepard extended her hand, and the two shook. "Captain Bailey. Nice to see you again. How are things on the ward?"

Bailey's mouth quirked and he twitched an eyebrow meaningfully. "Hoping they don't get too interesting now you're back. Is there anything I can do for you? Guessing this isn't just a social visit."

Shepard jerked her head at Thane. "My associate's trying to find his son. We think a local criminal might have hired him."

She didn't introduce Krios. She didn't introduce Garrus. And she didn't ask about Fade. Garrus shifted.

 _What business could an assassin have on the Citadel that Shepard could approve of? I never_ like _the answers to these questions. Shepard, being Shepard, is more concerned about the kid her teammate wants to keep in line than a forger who_ might _lead to a guy that needs killing. In the meantime, the scanner back there just tagged me, and somewhere the name 'Garrus Vakarian' is filtering through the Citadel's systems, just waiting for a person or a VI responsible for protecting Lantar from anyone that wants to find him to pick it up._

Bailey pulled up recent files. "This should be easy. We don't see many drell here—" He shuffled through files, then nodded, as if he'd remembered right away but had just wanted to confirm. "There we go: one of my men reported a drell recently . . ." He frowned. "And he was talking to Mouse. Interesting."

Thane blinked. "Mouse?" he repeated, as if he recognized the name.

Bailey waved a hand. "Ah, petty criminal. Probably not the guy who hired your boy, but a messenger. He's a former duct rat, runs errands for anyone who'll pay."

"Duct rat?" Shepard asked.

"Orphan, refugee, or truant, probably," Garrus told her.

Bailey shot him a glance, then nodded. "It's the local slang for the poor kids who grow up on the station," he confirmed. "When they're small they tend to play in the ventilation ducts where adults can't get to them."

Shepard's mouth turned down. Back in the day, she'd been a duct rat, Garrus knew, or whatever the equivalent was down on Earth. "Aren't the ducts dangerous?"

Bailey sighed and steepled his hands over his desk. "Every couple of months we pull a little body out of them. Lacerated by fan blades, broken by a dead fall. Suffocated by vacuum exposure."

"The ones you find, anyway," Garrus said darkly. He remembered the panicked parents and siblings. Child duct casualties were hardly the worst thing he'd seen in C-Sec, but their deaths were so preventable.

Bailey looked at him again, eyes narrowed. "We think some of them might get sucked into space," he agreed. "Maybe they fall into the protein vats the Keepers run."

Shepard's fists clenched.

Garrus closed his eyes. _Screw it._ He wanted to shake her. He wanted to scream, but the helpless rage Commander Shepard felt when she couldn't save people who deserved it was the same helpless rage he felt when he couldn't punish people who deserved it. And it came from the same damn source. He stepped up to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her, like she'd done for him on Tunchanka.

 _I'm this close to snapping, Shepard, but I'm here. You'll kill me if our mission doesn't, but I'm here._

"Mouse survived long enough that he can't fit in the ducts anymore," Bailey was explaining. "He was one of the smarter ones . . . or the luckier ones."

Shepard folded her arms and leaned back on her hip. "What sort of trouble has Mouse been getting himself into?"

Bailey shrugged. "Odd jobs for shifty people. Duct rats take whatever's available to get by: data running, fencing stolen goods, selling illegal VI personalities." Suddenly, he grinned. "Actually, he was selling one of you."

Shepard blinked. "Me?" she repeated.

"Yeah, when you erased a file it would say, 'I delete data like you on the way to real errors,'" Bailey told her.

Garrus shook his head. "That's pretty extreme, Commander."

Shepard shoved him lightly. "Laugh it up, Garrus."

"Buggy, though," Bailey noted. "It crashed every half hour. The error message was about how the galaxy was at stake and you should fix the problem yourself."

Garrus chuckled, and even Shepard cracked a smile. "So we look for Mouse?" she confirmed.

Bailey nodded. "He's usually on Level 28 around Pylos Street. Hangs out around the Dark Star."

"I know the place," Shepard told him.

"He works out of a public comm terminal," Bailey told them. He sat back in his chair, smiling again. "You should pick up a copy of the Shepard VI when you talk to him." Then he looked at Thane, more seriously. "It sounds like your boy's running with the wrong crowd."

"Yes, I agree," Krios said gravely.

"If Mouse can't get you in touch with your son directly, he'll know who can," Bailey said. "I'll help you if you need it."

Shepard stiffened, almost imperceptibly. _Whatever job Mouse recruited Krios's kid for, it's bad enough Shepard doesn't want Bailey any more involved than he has to be._ "I'm sure you're busy, Captain," she said. "Why would you take the time?"

Bailey regarded Krios. "I've worked Zakera for two years," he said then. "Every day kids turn to crime because they've got no other choice, because their parents don't care. You're trying to save yours."

"He faces a dark path," Krios said simply.

"Let's make sure he doesn't get too far down it," Shepard said, clapping Thane on the shoulder. She nodded at Bailey. "Captain." She started out of the office. "Come on, Garrus," she said.

Garrus hesitated, then fell into step.

He followed Shepard and Krios out of the C-Sec station. "You didn't tell him that Kolyat plans to assassinate someone," Thane murmured to Shepard.

Shepard shrugged. "He's a cop. He'd try to stop Kolyat, and one of them could end up dead. I don't want that."

Garrus stopped. "Commander." Shepard slowed down and turned to face him. Garrus didn't mince words. "Are you sure you need me for this? This seems like the sort of thing you and Thane could handle on your own. I could get a head start on tracking down Fade." He understood the drell might want to resolve the situation before heading off on a suicide mission, but they'd wasted days already that Sidonis could have used to get halfway across the galaxy with the new identity Fade had given him. He'd been living months on borrowed time, and it was past time he paid up. Garrus wasn't going to abandon Shepard and risk his availability here, but if she needed to take care of this first, she could catch up later.

Shepard raised her eyebrows at him. "You could get a head start tracking down Fade," she agreed. "And maybe Thane and I could handle this on our own, but we don't know who Kolyat's mixed up with. Anything could happen. I'd like to be prepared. Even if everything goes off without a hitch, though, I'd like you to to come."

It wasn't an order. If he wanted, he could interpret it as a release. _I could walk away right now, and she wouldn't stop me._

 _Damn._

"If you want me, I'm there," he said reluctantly. "But Shepard, we need to track down Fade. Sidonis could be weeks ahead of us by now."

Shepard tilted her head. "Fade's job is to give people a new life. Someone on the run like Sidonis will want to blend in, which he can do better in a hub like the Citadel than he can in a colony," she pointed out. "Odds are, he stayed here and has started a new life under a new name. We'll find him."

Garrus held her gaze, and she didn't look away. "Good," he said.

* * *

Whatever she said, Shepard sure wasn't in any hurry to get Krios's business sorted and get to Fade. She stopped in the middle of Zakera to mediate between an angry volus and a quarian he'd accused of theft, and it wasn't until they'd taken an hour to prove the quarian had not, in fact, stolen anything that she was willing to even resume the search for Mouse.

Garrus simmered as he walked behind her. _I could be back talking to Bailey, or over in Kithoi. Chellick or Mila might be willing to slip me some intel. If they're still around. If they know anything._

But the truth was, the more people that knew he was here, the bigger the chance someone or something would tip off Sidonis. One thing he had always been able to trust—the one thing he should have remembered—was the bastard's instincts for self-preservation.

Still, Shepard and Krios eventually tracked Mouse down. There was a public terminal near the Dark Star, just like Bailey had said, and there was a kid there, human, chatting into a jury-rigged headpiece and typing an email up on a free server. He was average height but underfed, as the clothes he wore attested. They were all either too tight, clinging to his skeletal frame, or drowning him. He was maybe in his late teens, of vague ethnicity, with a once-broken nose, acne, a fading, yellow bruise on his cheekbone, and purpler ones on his knuckles.

"You Mouse?" Shepard asked, interrupting his call.

The kid turned, annoyed. "What are you—" He caught sight of Thane and jumped about a foot in the air. "Oh, shit! Krios! I thought you retired!" His wide eyes darted to Shepard and almost bugged out of his head. "Commander Shepard?! I thought you died! And you—" He peered at Garrus, eyes tracing the remnants of the Cipritine colony tattoos, a face that had once been pretty well known on the vids around here. "You're Garrus Vakarian, aren't you? Shit. What do you guys want with me?"

Krios reached out and gripped the boy's shoulder, a gesture too familiar for a new acquaintance. Garrus had thought Thane had recognized the name when Bailey had dropped it. "Be still, Mouse," Krios said, a flicker of amusement passing over his lips. "You can change your pants in a moment."

"How do you know Thane?" Shepard asked.

The kid blinked. "He didn't—" He folded his arms, and his jaw set. "He didn't—if he didn't say nothing, I ain't either."

Krios released him, glancing at Shepard. "When we heard the name, I didn't think it could be the same Mouse," he explained. "He was a contact on the Citadel when I was active. He and some other children would gather information on my targets."

Shepard paused. "You put _children_ in danger to spy for you," she summarized, an edge of disgust in her voice.

Krios didn't react to it. "Children, the poor. My people's word for their kind is _drala'fa_ , the ignored. They are everywhere, see everything, yet they are never seen." Without warning, he lunged forward and grabbed Mouse's collar. The kid gulped and blanched, staring down at Thane. His hands flexed around Thane's wrists helplessly. "You gave another drell instructions for an assassination. Who was the target?"

Mouse raised his hands. "I . . . I don't know," he yelped. "I didn't ask! 'Cause the people I work for, they can make me disappear." Thane put him down. "I'd like to help you, Krios," Mouse added. "You've always done right for us, but . . . I ain't gonna die for you!"

Shepard folded her arms. "Look. You know Thane. He wouldn't ask if it wasn't important," she cajoled the kid, playing the good cop to Krios's bad. "Do it for him."

Mouse shot a nervous glance at her. "I want to. He was always nice to us! But these people ain't nice, Krios."

"Nobody's going to know you talked to us," Shepard promised.

"Mouse, I swear that you won't be named," Thane seconded.

Mouse folded his hands behind his head. He made a face, then a frustrated noise. "Alright, alright," he agreed. "He came with that holo you took of me. Said he wanted a job. I read through your old contacts to see who might give him a shot. The guy who offered was Elias Kelham."

"Tell me about Kelham," Shepard instructed coolly.

"Human," Mouse said flatly. "Moved to the Citadel about ten years ago. He was little people when you were here, Krios," he told Thane. "He got big after the geth attack. Lots of the big guys from before got cacked, all in the big, fancy apartments up on the Presidium. Now he runs the rackets on the lower end of the ward, Shin Akiba. He's seriously bad news."

Shepard shot him a smile. "Thanks, Mouse."

The kid was trembling, though, eyes darting from side to side like he wanted to go hide out. "Yeah. Hope I live long enough to pat myself on the back," he muttered.

"Kelham will never know," Krios repeated.

Mouse straightened his jacket. "I hope not. I'm outta here, Krios." He scowled. "Next time you're in town, just don't bring the family."

Shepard raised her hands, indicating he was free to go. As he walked away, she shot Krios a look. "So. Mouse?"

"Mouse knew more about my life than Kolyat ever did," Thane said quietly. His eyes focused on something in the distance. " _He smiles up at me, broken teeth and scabby knees, bare feet black. A dead-end future looking up at me. Worshipping the petty gifts I offer._ "

Solipsism. Garrus had heard of it before. He'd never seen it happen. One reason drell were so valuable to the hanar was their eidetic memories, memories that enabled them to learn faster and infiltrate quicker than any other species in space. The downside was that drell memories could be so powerful that, given sufficient stimulus, they could recall past experiences as if they were living them all over again. Drell drug addicts and trauma victims ran a distinct risk of _never_ recovering. Right now, Thane was seeing the child Mouse had been as he'd known him a decade ago just as clearly as anything else on the Citadel.

"I was the only good thing he had back then," Krios concluded. "And I left him, as I left Kolyat."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "He said you had a holo of him?"

"Yes," Thane agreed. "A foolish bit of sentimentality. I can perfectly recall every moment I spent with Mouse." Once again, his eyes fell out of focus. " _He pulls at my arm, smiles. He wants to know that I'll remember him, that anyone will remember him. I take the holo. He smiles at himself in miniature on my palm. Then a frown wrinkles his brow. He pats my pockets, checking for other holos. 'Where's your son, Krios?' he asks._ "

Shepard waited until Krios had finished. She didn't look thrown by his episodes. Odds were she'd seen a few during rounds. Her lips were pursed, though. Without comment, she said, "Let's head back to Bailey."

* * *

"Got information for you," Shepard told Bailey, not too much later.

The C-Sec captain looked up with interest. "Yeah? Who hired the boy?"

"Elias Kelham."

"Kelham?" Bailey sat back in his chair heavily, and his fingers drummed on his desk for a moment. "Shit," he muttered. "Ahh . . . look, this is awkward. Kelham and I have an agreement. He doesn't cause too much trouble and buys tickets to the 'C-Sec Charity Ball' from me. In return, I ignore him."

It wasn't uncommon, Garrus knew. Small-time and white-collar criminals often made _donations_ to C-Sec or turned informant on more violent offenders to keep the cops off their back. He still hated to see it. _You give a guy a get-out-of-jail-free card for the small stuff, and eventually, he thinks he can get away with bigger stuff. And now Kelham's hired an assassin._

Shepard wasn't shy about how she felt about Bailey's C-Sec Charity Ball. "He pays you off. You were ready to help us before. Is it too inconvenient now?"

Bailey squirmed, looking from her to Garrus to Thane. "I said I'd help," he protested, "It's just, there'll be repercussions if I don't handle it right. He and I give each other space. It keeps the peace. I'll get some of my people to bring him in and set him up in a private room. You can interrogate him yourself. I'll stay out of sight. If I'm lucky, Kelham will believe that I had nothing to do with it."

Shepard sighed. "Bring him in," she ordered the captain. "We might not have much time. And Captain—thanks."

Bailey winced. Shepard hadn't made a point of it, but he knew she was speaking as a Spectre. He stood. "I'll make it happen," he told them. "Wait here."

Bailey left to tell one of the grunts to make the arrest. "How do you want to do this?" Garrus asked. His voice came out clipped, but Shepard knew he just wanted to get this over with.

"If he believes he has a deal with Bailey, Kelham may not talk if he sees you, Garrus," Thane said.

Shepard considered this. She tapped her foot against the floor. "He's right," she decided. "Your posture, the way you talk, the paint on your damn armor, it all reeks of C-Sec even if we weren't seeing the guy in a police interrogation room." She looked at Thane. "Still, I hate to leave him. He's got investigative training I just don't. Catches things I miss sometimes, on and off the battlefield."

"Maybe one time in twenty," Garrus muttered, feeling his neck heat up. "Personally, I think you've just gotten lazy."

"You've gotten better, and I've let you," Shepard retorted, eyes flashing. "And I'm not going to cry if I don't have to micromanage every second we're in the field because you're with me."

Krios regarded Garrus thoughtfully. "Perhaps it might be beneficial if you stood outside the interrogation room, Garrus," he suggested. "You could inform us over radio of any useful observations without needlessly provoking Kelham."

"So, I'm the profiler."

"You'd make a good film crew, too," Shepard pointed out, with a nod at his visor. "If we get a confession, I'm not going to hesitate leaving Bailey with the evidence to put this guy away, regardless of whether he bought tickets to the 'C-Sec Charity Ball.'"

"Hah. Now that's a plan I can get behind. D'you know when they'll bring him in?"

Shepard exchanged a look with Krios. "Probably longer than two minutes," she said levelly.

The impatience under his voice would have had Pallin or his father telling him to get a grip. Most standard translator programs didn't come with subvocal add-ons any more than they did with body language interpretation software, but sometimes the essence of nonverbal communication leaked through across species regardless of translation. Shepard wasn't hearing _screw this_ as loud as a turian would right now, but she was hearing it well enough.

Garrus shook his head. "Just radio when I need to be stationed outside the interrogation room," he said.

* * *

Pacing the C-Sec station did absolutely no good. It didn't get Kelham detained any faster and didn't get Garrus any closer to Fade and Sidonis. Just gave Shepard more reason to worry. He saw her watching him more than once from her and Krios's position by the interrogation rooms.

It wasn't much consolation that Krios seemed nervous, too, tense, scanning the station every few seconds for all he kept still. Of course he was nervous. His kid was out to shoot somebody. _This isn't a life you want for your kids. Whatever problems I've had with Dad, I get that much. Better a safe, law-abiding C-Sec officer than a killer about to get his ass blown up every day. This life chooses you, and if you see someone you care about about to choose it, you do whatever you can to talk them out of it._

Most drell assassins were chosen as part of the Compact they'd made when the hanar had saved the species from extinction. Technically, they could refuse to serve, but social pressure was great enough they usually didn't, and the hanar chose their assassins _young_ , raised them to it as children. Krios probably hadn't ever known anything different, but Kolyat had a choice. Hearing Bailey, Shepard, and Krios talk, and judging from Krios's apparent age, Garrus got the sense Kolyat was probably around Oriana Lawson's age. _Still a kid. Young enough to be stupid. Old enough someone might not know to look at him. Bailey's officer would have taken special notice of a child._

 _Shepard's right. A few hours or a day won't make a difference to me and Sidonis. Probably. Two of them are at stake right now—Kelham's target and Kolyat._

 _I should care about that. Any other day I could. Before I knew about Fade. After Sidonis is dead. Damn it!_

That was the point, of course. Shepard might need him in the interrogation room or she might not, but her actual goal here was to slow him down. _Not to stop me, I don't think. At least, it better not be._ Samara could potentially be just as useful as backup here, but Shepard wanted him here because she _wanted_ him thinking about saving Krios's kid instead of killing Sidonis right now.

 _Probably healthier. Probably better. But Spectre or not, Shepard, you don't get to decide what's important, what's important to other people. That justice for ten dead men matters less than the futures of one stupid kid and another guy that probably has it coming._

Garrus heard shouting in the hallway. He faded into the shadows of the hall that led off to the employee locker rooms as the exhausted asari officer he'd seen earlier dragged a human male into an interrogation room. The man was stocky, middle-aged, and dressed in a suit modeled on Hierarchy styles, but his slicked-back black hair and skinny goatee gave him an oily, untrustworthy appearance to begin with. He was yelling about his rights and Captain Bailey. The asari wasn't taking it, though. The light in the interrogation room flicked on, and through the two-way mirrored observation window, Garrus saw her using her biotics to force the man into restraints in a reclining chair in the center of the room. She stalked out of the room, leaving the man, Kelham, bound inside.

On the other side of the station, Bailey had walked over to Shepard and Krios. He led them over to the interrogation room and nodded at Garrus in the shadows.

Another female officer, human this time, stuck her head in from the front. "Captain, his lawyer's here," she reported. "Bet Elias has his VI set to page him if C-Sec gets within ten meters."

Bailey scowled but nodded at Shepard and Krios. "I'll stall him. Get in there, and work fast."

Shepard looked at Garrus. "Signal us when we're running out of time."

Garrus nodded curtly and stepped up to stand beside the observation window. Thane and Shepard stayed standing a meter and a half away for a moment, obviously deciding how to handle the interrogation. Shepard eyed the door, but Krios, despite all he had riding on this, kept his eyes on Shepard.

 _You've seen that kind of reaction before._ Krios's hyperattentiveness was subtle, closer to what Garrus had seen from Liara than from Kaidan or Jacob—and all the more difficult to distinguish because his visor didn't track drell life signs—but the tell was still visible.

 _Great. All you needed was for the drell assassin in the open leather shirt to develop an interest in Shepard. Softspoken and eloquent, moves like a cat, with a troubled family and a tragically short life expectancy. The nauseating romance vid almost writes itself._

 _And you thought this day couldn't get any more annoying._

But then Shepard walked into the interrogation room, and it was time to go to work. Krios followed her in, shutting the door beside him, and Garrus forced himself to focus on the task at hand.

Kelham craned his neck around, trying to see his interrogators. Anger mixed with confusion when he saw a human and a drell, both heavily armored but not in a C-Sec uniform. "Who the hell are you two?" he muttered.

Shepard gave him a small, cold smile. "Call for Bailey all you want," she told him. "He has nothing to do with this. We just want a few answers, off the record."

Kelham scoffed, fighting the restraints. "Off the record in a C-Sec interrogation room? Sure."

Shepard paced around his chair, making him follow her. "You hired an assassin," she said. "Who do you want dead?"

Kelham's lips thinned. "I want to see my advocate," he told her. "You two are in way over your heads. Bailey won't let you touch me."

Shepard tilted her head, letting her smile widen. "Bailey doesn't know you're here. But he will. After we're done."

Garrus saw Kelham look Shepard up and down pointedly. "What, sweetheart? You're gonna bore me into confessing?" he sneered. "You ain't shit. Come on, hit me. I dare you." Shepard didn't move. Just folded her arms, leaned back on her hip, and waited. "No, huh? Didn't think you had the balls."

She wouldn't, Garrus knew. It wasn't her style. Shepard would always prefer waiting someone out, or convincing the perp to cooperate with her, that she had something they wanted. The trouble was, he didn't know if they had time for that.

"Careful, Shepard," he murmured over the radio. "We might need this name fast."

She gave no sign she'd heard him. "Think carefully, Elias. I want to catch the assassin, not you. Why stick your neck out for him?" She'd adopted a reasonable, cajoling tone, and Garrus could see it was working. Kelham was starting to relax.

"You want me to confess to putting a contract on someone?" he retorted. "You think I'm stupid?"

Shepard shrugged. "I get the name, I walk out. You never see me again."

Kelham looked away from her. "I got no reason to believe you." Behind the glass, Garrus rolled his eyes.

"He'll talk," he told Shepard. "He's angling for a deal." From the second Shepard had started talking, he'd talked and acted like someone with something to confess, and he knew it. Shepard tilted her head, examining Kelham, and Garrus started the vid, but down the hallway, he saw Bailey arguing with a human in a suit. He hit the signal button, and a tone sounded over the radio, letting Shepard know there wasn't much time.

In the interrogation room, Krios stepped forward and caught Shepard's arm. "This isn't working, Shepard. We're making no progress." Shepard arched an eyebrow at the drell, and he let her go. She turned back to Kelham.

"Are we done here?" Kelham demanded. "Because I got people to see. Goddamn waste of my time," he grumbled.

Shepard regarded Kelham a moment, and then she said, "How about this: you tell us the target, you never see us again, and Bailey drops his price 50 percent."

Kelham paused. "Yeah?" he asked, intrigued. "Can I get that in writing?"

Shepard smirked. "I don't think either of us wants this in writing."

She had his measure, Garrus saw, and he was ready to talk. "Alright," he agreed. "I ain't going to jail for the tadpole, and I do love a bargain. Joram Talid. Turian running for office in the Zakera Ward. He messes with . . . legitimate businessmen." His face darkened. "I'm gonna stop it."

Krios stepped forward again. "Where and when?"

Kelham sneered. "His apartment, the 800 blocks. You better hurry."

At the end of the hallway, the human in the suit shouldered past Bailey. As he strode past Garrus toward the door to the interrogation room, Garrus signaled again, but they had what they needed. He shut off the vid as Kelham's advocate entered the room, waving his arms at Shepard and Krios.

"What's going on here?" he demanded. "Get away from my client!"

Kelham blinked. The color drained from his face as he realized he had just made a deal with a person who had no obligation to honor it, made a confession in a C-Sec interrogation room without his lawyer. He strained against his restraints. "You!" he cried. "You played me!"

Shepard smiled coldly. "I've enjoyed our chat, Elias. Thanks for your help."

She headed toward the door. "This isn't over," Kelham threatened her.

Krios fell in step with Shepard. The door cracked open, and Garrus heard him saying, "Nicely done."

"Wait," Kelham called. "You got what you wanted. Who ratted me out?"

Shepard turned back around. "Think you're a little fuzzy on how interrogations work, Elias. Enjoy your time in prison."

"I'll find out," Kelham promised. "And once I have a name I—"

Kelham's lawyer cut him off as Shepard and Krios shut the door. "Elias, as your legal advocate, I advise you to shut the hell up."

In the interrogation room, Kelham and his lawyer started arguing. It didn't matter. They had what they needed. Bailey came down the hallway, and Garrus transferred the vid to his omni-tool in five seconds. Bailey sighed. His paperwork wasn't going to be fun today, but on the whole and to his credit, he didn't look too bitter about sending his cash cow to jail. "What's the story?" he asked Shepard. "Why'd Kelham hire the boy?"

"Assassination. A turian named Joram Talid," Shepard told him. "We've got to get to the 800 blocks, fast. You know the target?"

Bailey frowned. "Joram? Yeah. You might have seen his posters around. He's promising to end organized crime on the ward. Thing is, his message is all mixed up in race politics. He's antihuman."

Garrus had heard some antihuman grumbling before he'd left the Citadel, and of course there were antihuman _religious_ groups on Omega. But this was the first he'd heard of xenophobic politics catching any momentum in the heart of Citadel space.

Shepard was distracted, too. "Are things so bad that people can openly campaign as antihuman?"

Bailey shrugged. "Before the Citadel, the alien population thought that we were violent upstarts. Look what's happened since then: a human fleet guarding the station for months, C-Sec filled with humans? Anderson does what he can, but some people have lived on this station since before humans had starships. They see it as a coup."

 _Not yet_ , Garrus thought. _Give them another century_. He'd always worked well with humans. Of course, Shepard was the best friend he had left in the galaxy, but he'd liked other humans well enough too. On the whole, they were smart, resourceful, and he'd found they were more likely to be friends than enemies if they were approached that way and treated like equals. But he'd never say they weren't dangerous. Thirty years from their first contact, they could rival the other Council races—and did. There were human individuals that could match asari for subtlety or salarians for brilliance, and the Alliance military had surprised the Hierarchy thirty years ago and was making them very nervous now. He could see where some people might be coming from.

Shepard pursed her lips. "I guess if a majority votes for him . . ."

Bailey looked like she'd force-fed him something sour, and Garrus himself was surprised. _She'd stand behind restrictions on humans if that's what the Citadel wanted?_ "That's a nice ideal, Shepard," Bailey said acidly.

She rolled her eyes. "I didn't say you shouldn't campaign to change their minds."

Bailey huffed, then raised his hand, summoning an officer. "Sergeant, get a patrol car! These three need to get to the 800 blocks."

The officer—human, female, young, with the light still in her eyes—saluted. "Yes, sir!" she cried, and scurried off to get them a car. Garrus tried not to resent Krios as he got ready to go looking for the wrong killer.

* * *

 **A/N: I had both of these almost ready, so you guys get two updates this week. Please enjoy dorky, insecure Garrus. It was about time he made a big appearance. Of course, you've also got the more standard, broody, revenge-obsessed Garrus, now cranked up into high gear now that he can smell Sidonis's blood.**

 **Merry Christmas. Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	29. Priorities: Lifesaving 101

XXIX

Priorities: Lifesaving 101

They saw Talid the minute the hovercar landed in the market center of the 800 blocks of Zakera. Fortunately, Talid hadn't made it back to his apartment, where Krios Jr. was supposed to make the hit. Garrus's visor flagged their man, the turian with the highest number of media hits in the square, but he thought he'd've recognized Talid anyway. He was a politician, and he looked it, standing straight in a crisp suit, smiling and shaking hands with a shopkeeper, a krogan in red armor standing professionally about a meter behind him with the bored-but-alert posture of bodyguard.

Shepard stepped close to Garrus and gestured at a nearby storefront, looking at Krios, like the three of them were discussing a shopping trip. Krios immediately picked up on the ruse and orientated his body toward the shop. Garrus kept Talid in his periphery but didn't face him. If Kolyat was already on Talid, they didn't want to spook him. "How you wanna play this?" Shepard asked in an undertone.

Krios nodded, as if he were approving a plan. "Follow Talid on the maintenance catwalks," he ordered them quietly. "The krogan bodyguard will make him easy to follow. If you see Kolyat, you may have a better angle to disable him than I will."

Shepard gestured back behind them at some other shops, then looked at her omni-tool, as if checking a time for a rendezvous back at the car lot. "Where will you be?"

"The darkest corner with the best view," Krios told them, already turning away, blending into the crowd. Shepard glanced at Garrus, and the two of them moved to do the same. In the heart of a retail district, it wasn't difficult, but as Garrus signaled Shepard toward a column likely to have a maintenance ladder tucked behind it, they heard other words over an open channel. "Amonkira, Lord of Hunters, grant that my hands be steady, my aim true, and my feet swift. And should the worst come to pass, grant me forgiveness."

Shepard missed a step. Garrus grimaced. _We weren't supposed to hear that._ They'd need to have the channel open to keep in contact as they tracked Talid, though, so there was no point in cutting off radio contact. He gestured for Shepard to precede him up onto the catwalk and tried not to wonder what was "the worst" Krios imagined could happen here.

Shepard turned around to help him up at the top of the ladder, and Garrus joined her on the catwalks above the market. _Damn, is_ this _familiar_. It was Zakera not Kithoi, but otherwise, the situation here was almost exactly the same as his early days in investigation, following some person of interest to get something concrete on them. _Or setting up an ambush on Omega._ Garrus kept to the shadows, choosing crossbeams where they would have an excellent view of Talid and his guard, but the two of them would have to look straight up and _be_ looking to see them. For once, Shepard walked behind him. This was his area, and she knew it.

A little knot of spectators had formed around Talid by now. Garrus tagged their races and likely occupations automatically. Four turians, a volus, two asari, a hanar. Aside from the biotics of the asari, only one of the turians was armed. Probably an off-duty guard himself. The others were probably other shopkeepers or artists. Civilians. Most looked curious, but one of the asari and one of the turians was definitely invested in Talid's message.

The crowd beyond was clear, for now. Garrus didn't see another drell or anyone skulking around at all. Talid's voice rose above the ambient news of the market. "It's been wonderful talking with you all. I hope you'll come out on Election Day."

Shepard's voice, behind him, was low and measured. "We're on him, Thane," she said. "He's talking to some voters."

Thane's voice sounded over the radio. "Understood."

"You're in position?" Shepard asked.

"Yes."

Talid started moving up the street, and after a moment, Garrus started after him. "I'm following," Krios confirmed over the radio.

Talid stopped near another cluster of people around an advertisement for an anticipated skycar model. He shook hands with a turian and began chatting with an asari and volus nearby. The bodyguard's helmet made it difficult to tell who he was watching. Garrus held his hand up to stop Shepard before she walked on into the krogan's periphery, wider than that of most other species.

"Have you got him?" Thane asked.

"Looks like he's talking to another voter," Shepard reported.

"Any sign of Kolyat?"

Shepard scanned the street below and looked at Garrus. He shook his head. He'd clocked an elcor, three hanar, and numerous of the more common Citadel races, but the only drell he'd seen since they'd arrived in the 800 blocks was Thane. "No."

"I'm moving to another position," Krios told them. "Ahead of him."

All in all, tailing anyone was one of the more boring parts of regular investigative work. No one was really interesting if you followed them all day, and even serial killers spent a significant amount of time browsing the extranet, eating, and eliminating. You trained your mind to log other things in order to stay engaged—changes in advertisements, trends in store fronts, the state of relationships between colleagues or business partners or couples on the street.

In this commercial district of the Citadel, for example, Garrus noticed the Blasto franchise was going about as strong as any crap, cliched series with plenty of cheap but colorful special effects tended to do. He saw a couple mannequins sporting Earth fashions for humans and asari—in boutiques that didn't exactly look low-end, which was interesting. _Well. Power sells._ He saw a couple of volus arguing with a turian, probably a merchant partner, and a shoplifting salarian skulking away from a gaming store—maybe six years old. He was small game, but Garrus took a quick shot from his visor anyway to drop by C-Sec later. If the shops started complaining later, Bailey's people might have a place to start.

Every moment he was aware of the talk that might be filtering through back channels on the Citadel to Sidonis, the time that they were losing, but the tedium was starting to get to Shepard, too. Her right index finger tapped against the railing of the catwalk, and her right leg jogged up and down. Garrus sighed. Cutting his microphone connection to the radio for a second, he spoke in an undertone, "Been a while since the last stakeout, Shepard?"

Shepard stilled, noticing the slight rattle her shifting plates and weapons were giving off. "Fifteen years, give or take," she murmured. "I was younger than Mouse. One of Thane's _drala'fa_ , and I didn't wear any of this crap yet." She let out a breath of air and rolled her shoulders. "Amazing how often spec ops boil down to running in and just getting the job done better and faster than the other guys. Anything else?"

There was a dry irritation in her voice, but more at herself than at him, Garrus thought. "Try to scan the street," Garrus suggested. "Mark's more likely to pick up a steady gaze—survival instincts. You'll be less bored, too."

He reconnected to his mic just as Thane spoke over the radio. "No problems so far. Do you have the target?"

"We're on him," Garrus reported, moving ahead on the catwalks as Talid started down the street again.

His attention sharpened as Talid's gait changed from the leisurely stride of a politician making a public appearance to the more determined one of a man running errands. Talid continued to smile and nod at people, but he wasn't stopping anymore. He had things to do. Garrus nodded at Shepard and quickened his own pace as Talid took a left turn up ahead.

There was a door up on the corresponding catwalk where there wasn't one on the street, but once they were through it, it was easy enough to catch sight of Talid again. Now he was doing something interesting—in that the bodyguard was the one moving. Talid himself was leaning nonchalantly against an advertisement pillar outside a shop, while the krogan stormed inside. Garrus could see the human shopkeeper jump back when he did.

"Can you give me an update?" Krios asked.

"He's outside of a store," Garrus told him. "His bodyguard is going in." He and Shepard watched as the krogan swept an arm through a datapad display the storekeeper had set up, leaned forward, and collared the human. The human raised both hands, pleading with the bodyguard. "Looks like he's strongarming the shopkeeper."

"I'm almost in position," Krios replied. "He's letting the bodyguard do all the work. That lets him deny involvement."

Talid's bodyguard shoved the shopkeeper back, plucked a credit chit off the counter, and shoved it in a pocket. He walked out of the human shop, Talid nodded at him, and the two started off again. "Kelham might have been bad, but this guy definitely doesn't need to be in power either," Garrus muttered.

Shepard glanced at him. "Gunning him down isn't the answer to that."

As they followed Talid from the commercial district and into an entertainment sector of the 800 blocks, Garrus did another sweep for a drell, but he didn't see Krios or Kolyat on the street below. "Did Kolyat receive any of your training, Thane?" he asked.

"Not as early as I received it, certainly." Thane replied, voice tense. "The hanar did not request his services. And his relatives and my contact on Kahje have reported nothing. But I have not truly seen him in years. I cannot speak for everything he may have learned."

"Great."

"No sign of trouble yet," Krios reported.

Shepard grimaced. _Yeah, that's probably a jinx._

Off the street, Garrus heard the pulsing bass of a nearby club. It was just past noon, Citadel time, but that didn't matter in the heart of galactic civilization. Every hour of the day, someone was just getting off work, someone was on vacation, and someone wanted to party. Clubs and bars on the Citadel ran all day and night, and they were always popular hangouts and meeting places. Garrus wasn't too surprised when Talid turned into the bar. He went through another door, and Shepard led the way across an overhead catwalk to get a better angle on their mark.

Talid passed the dancers—some of whom were really letting loose—and headed toward the bar. Walking a ways away from his bodyguard, he struck up a conversation with a turian in a suit as the krogan leaned over the bar toward the human bartender at this establishment.

"We've got him," Shepard reported, disgust coloring her voice.

"I don't have a good angle," Krios told them. "What's he doing?"

"One of his guards is talking to the bartender," Shepard said. The man below shoved another credit chit over the bar. "Looks like another shakedown."

"I'm relocating to the next room," Krios said. "Let me know if anything changes."

He was scoping out the bar for Kolyat. It would be a good place to start tailing Talid if Kolyat had somehow got a hold of Talid's schedule but didn't have his home address.

The krogan rejoined Talid, and the two of them continued on toward the back room of the bar. As they passed through the doors on the catwalk, Garrus frowned. Below, there were three or four other krogan at a table, all dressed in red armor like Talid's bodyguard. _Merc ties. Never good._

The bodyguard clasped the arms of the other krogan, and Talid sat down at the table. "He's meeting a couple of mercenaries," Shepard told Krios. "Looks like the same group his bodyguard comes from."

"'Wiping out organized crime on the Citadel,'" Garrus remembered Bailey saying. He shook his head. _Politicians._

"He looks nervous," Krios observed. "Could be he's noticed you."

"Or you. Or Kolyat," Shepard pointed out, nettled.

"Also possibilities," the assassin conceded. "There are obstructions ahead. I'll try to go around. Don't lose him."

Below them, Talid had finished talking with the mercs about whatever they had to discuss. He stood with his bodyguard. They were almost directly above him, and so they heard him when he said, "I've got that weird feeling. Like somebody's watching me."

Garrus kept very still. When someone had almost made a tail, sudden movement was more likely to give the game away, not less. "Quick," he deadpanned in an undertone. "Look away!"

Only belatedly did he realize the crack might have been a bad idea. They'd already established Shepard hadn't had done any real investigative work since her days on the streets. He glanced at Shepard out of the corner of his eye, only to see that dry, amused exasperation all over her face. _Good. She knows the basics at least._

But when she saw him looking, her mouth quirked up, and moving at a natural pace, she melted back into the shadows and faded out under her tactical cloak. The movement was seamless, perfect, and in a moment, an armored shoulder brushed up against Garrus's, and he felt warm breath on his neck. "I can do you one better," Shepard murmured in his ear.

Garrus twitched. _When you tweak a tarlasz's tail . . ._

It was just banter. Shepard playing their game of trying to one-up and irritate the other, just like old times. _Escalated because she wants you out of your head right now, but still._ He knew that. Knew that any sudden movement might give them away to Talid or Kolyat.

The temptation to shove out at Shepard— _or do something even stupider_ —was still unbelievable. _Does she have_ any _idea?_

 _. . . Probably not._

So, simmering, he scanned the catwalk on the other side of the bar and the tables in the shadows underneath it, looking for Kolyat again. "Showoff," he muttered to the empty air. She'd already moved on. Her chuckle came from about a meter away on his flank.

Talid and his bodyguard were heading out of the bar now, toward a residential area. Maybe headed home. Garrus let them pass under the catwalk, then started moving through the doors toward the street they would come out on. A moment later, Shepard's cloak timed out, and she shimmered into sight beside him.

The second door out of the bar on the catwalk opened—not onto the maintenance catwalk for the street but into one of the storage and terminal rooms they had up here. Garrus stopped up short as a very surprised maintenance worker caught sight of them. His mouth dropped open, then his eyebrows came down. "Hey!" he cried. "Who are you? What are you doing back here?"

Shepard recovered first. "Uh . . . Citadel Health and Safety," she invented. "We've had vermin reports in storage areas around here."

Garrus bit back a groan. As a cover story, it was probably one of the stupidest things she could have come up with. The human maintenance worker's eyes took in their armor, their guns. _When she could've just said, 'Spectre business. Scram.' Spirits._ "What—you can't be serious," the man said. "How did you get in here?"

Garrus folded his arms. "If we didn't have authorization, how did we get in? See any other doors?" He channeled his exasperation at Shepard's idiotic story and their escaping target— _targets_ —into sounding like an exasperated government employee being kept from doing a stupid, boring job. _Not like I haven't had enough practice at that._

The maintenance worker glanced at one of the Keeper tunnels that ran through the Citadel. "There's the Keeper—never mind." He waved an impatient hand. "Just . . . just go on through, okay?"

"Thanks," Shepard told him, already moving toward the door to the street.

"Yeah, yeah," the worker said, glancing at their guns again. "Just don't let my boss see you."

On the street, at first Garrus thought they'd lost Talid. Then he saw the bodyguard's distinctive red armor, already almost down the street and into a block of apartments. But more than that—he saw the drell.

He was skulking by another public transportation stand, dressed in a leather suit like his father's, a pistol in his hand. Garrus drew his rifle immediately— _can't shoot! That's Krios's kid!_

An asari near Kolyat had noticed his weapon. She screamed. He raised the gun.

Shepard's voice snapped out over the concourse, loud and commanding. "Kolyat!"

The drell looked up wildly, saw them. Magnified at five times, Garrus saw his mouth set, saw him whirl around and fire two random shots in Talid's direction. Shields flashed blue and went out. The politician hit the ground, but he hadn't been hit—he staggered to his feet and through the door of his complex. It was his bodyguard on the ground. Kolyat Krios vaulted over the body and vanished into the apartment complex after his target.

"Thane!" Shepard yelled.

"I saw!" Krios confirmed, sounding out of breath himself.

"He's heading to Talid's apartment!" Shepard had already found the ladder leading down to the street. She slid down the sides without bothering with the rungs, and Garrus followed her. He stopped by the bodyguard's body. The krogan sat up, dazed. He was bleeding from a superficial head wound, and his eyes were cloudy. He'd be okay.

 _Incredibly lucky shots for the kid—took out his shields and rang his bell. Didn't kill him._

Striding behind Shepard into the complex, Garrus brought up his omni-tool, found the number for C-Sec Zakera Ward on the extranet in a moment, and called. "Citadel Security, Zakera Ward. Officer Ellen Kontos speaking."

"We have shots fired in the 800 residential block," Garrus said. "We've got one injured krogan bodyguard outside and a potential hostage situation in the apartment of Joram Talid. I repeat: shots fired in the 800 residential block. Potential hostage situation in the apartment of Joram Talid."

"Can you describe the assailant?" Officer Kontos said calmly.

"Drell. Young adult. Male. Name of Kolyat Krios. Blue leather suit and a heavy pistol. Advisory: Council Spectre Beth Shepard and I are going to try to resolve the situation with Krios's father. Requesting backup."

"We've locked in on your location," Kontos told him. "Calling a special response team now." The line went dead. At the other end of the hall, Thane was running toward them. A door gaped open between the three of them.

"There," Shepard said. Gun drawn, she entered the apartment first.

Joram Talid's living area was large. The up-to-the-minute style of the décor was ruined somewhat by the broken fragments of what had probably been some tasteful work of modern art strewn across the floor. Talid, suit rumpled, mandibles tight, was kneeling on the floor, his hands behind his head. A sharp, sour smell on the air indicated he'd wet himself.

Kolyat Krios stood behind him, looking almost as terrified as his victim. He held the gun to Talid's skull, but he was breathing so heavily, trembling so much, Garrus wondered if he'd even be able to shoot straight. _This kid's never killed anyone before_.

Shepard held her gun steady. Garrus followed her lead. But Krios raised his open hands, eyes intent on his son. "Kolyat."

Kolyat Krios shook his head, blinked. "This . . . this is a joke," he stammered. "Now? Now you show up?"

Kolyat Krios looked a lot like his father. His skin was a paler, cooler green than Thane's. He'd zipped up a suit that was accented blue instead of solid black and spoke in a higher, healthier-sounding voice, but looking at the two of them, it was obvious they were related.

"Help me, drell!" Talid begged Krios. "I'll do whatever you want."

Garrus heard boots in the hall outside. Then Captain Bailey, an asari, and another human man in C-Sec uniforms filed into the apartment. "C-Sec," Captain Bailey said in a calm, authoritative voice. "Put the gun down, son."

Kolyat's lip curled back over his teeth. "Get out of my way!" he snarled. "I'm walking out! He's coming with me!" He jerked his gun at Talid. Then his head tilted as he heard the sound of hover vehicles outside of the window.

"They'll have snipers outside," Krios told his son quietly.

Kolyat rounded on his father. "I don't need you—"

A lamp exploded behind him. Kolyat flinched and turned to look, and then Shepard, who had fired the shot, was right there with him. First, she tripped him with a booted foot to a pressure point on the interior of his calf. She followed up with an elbow to the gut, and then plucked the gun from his relaxed fingers in a second. Garrus almost smiled.

 _Nice._

Shepard looked down at the politician on the floor. "Talid, get the hell out of here."

Talid blinked up at her, then nodded several times and jumped to his feet. "Yeah, yeah, I will!" Garrus and Bailey's male officer stepped aside to let him run out of the apartment.

Bailey nodded at his officers. "Take the boy into custody."

The asari officer stepped up. Kolyat didn't fight as she cuffed him. He glared at his father, eyes wet and bright. "You son of a bitch!"

Shepard stepped up. "Your father doesn't have much time left, Kolyat. He's trying to make up for his mistakes."

Kolyat snorted. "What, so you came to get my forgiveness so you can die in peace or something?" he sneered at his father.

Krios shook his head. "I came to grant you peace." He paused. He wouldn't meet Kolyat's eyes. "You're angry because I wasn't there when your mother died."

"You weren't there when she was alive," Kolyat retorted. "Why should you be there when she died?"

Krios pressed his lips together. "Your mother . . . they killed her to get to me. It was my fault."

Kolyat stopped straining against the asari officer. "What?"

Krios hesitated. "After her body was given to the Deep, I went to find them: the trigger-men, the ringleaders." He shrugged. "I hurt them. Eventually killed them. When I went back to see you, you were . . . older. I should have stayed with you."

Kolyat laughed mirthlessly. "I guess it's too bad for me you waited so long, huh?"

Krios met his son's eyes then. "Kolyat, I've taken many bad things out of the world. You were the only good thing I ever added to it."

Bailey stepped forward. To Garrus's surprise, he looked more sympathetic than hard or grim. "This isn't a conversation you should have in front of strangers," he told Thane. He nodded at the asari. "Officers, take Kolyat and his father back to the precinct. Give them a room and as much time as they need."

The asari nodded. The man stepped forward from where he'd been updating the force outside and took his position on Kolyat's other side. Krios fell in line with them.

Shepard stared at Bailey. "Thank you," she said slowly.

Bailey answered the implicit question. "You think he's the only man who ever screwed up raising a son? I have to get back to the precinct. Come on. I'll give you two a lift."

* * *

"You were the one that called the assault in, weren't you?" Bailey asked from the driver's seat as he flew Garrus and Shepard back toward his station. "We were already in the neighborhood. Figured there might be trouble, but you helped us get there faster. Don't think Kontos caught your name. Isn't Vakarian, is it?"

Garrus folded his arms from where he sat in the back. "Took the time to check arrival records, did you?"

"I thought you sounded like you'd been one of ours once," Bailey admitted. "Sue me: I was curious. You look different in the vids."

Garrus's scars hadn't hurt in weeks, hadn't even itched the past several, but now they seemed to burn. "I'm much better looking in person, I know," he said. He looked out the window. _Just now, it's probably a good thing I'm unrecognizable._ "The vids are crap," he added after a moment.

He'd agreed to be interviewed for one, after Alchera. After they'd edited out everything he'd said about the Reapers, he'd decided he would never help out with another. There were a couple of other vids out there with 'Garrus Vakarian' stand-ins. They usually ranged from hilarious to insulting. "Even if they weren't, though—that was a long time ago."

Bailey hummed. "I'll say. Never got confirmation like with you, Shepard, but Citadel brass thought you were probably dead. Killed hunting drug lords out in the Terminus."

"Not quite," Garrus answered.

Bailey eyed him in the rearview mirror. "Guess not. I know a few people who'll be happy to hear it."

Shepard glanced over her shoulder. "Sounds like you've still got a few friends, Garrus."

"He never worked on my ward, but you don't collar scum like Laurent Georges and bust up the P'Miri trafficking ring without getting a rep as one of the better detectives on the force," Bailey told her. He chuckled softly. "The way you quit made a bit of an impression, too. All right. Coming in for a landing. You can wait for your friend in our lobby." Bailey pulled into the C-Sec garage and found his preassigned parking. As the doors opened, Bailey turned around to look at Garrus. "Vakarian. Thanks for the call. Good to see you still know how to make a report."

Garrus watched him go. "It'll be over the Citadel in three days that I'm here," he told Shepard in an undertone.

"We'll be on Sidonis's ass before it is," Shepard told him calmly.

"If he hears, Shepard—"

"You think a former vigilante from Omega spends a lot of his time hanging out at cop stations, do you?"

Garrus stared down at her. "No," he agreed after a moment. "No. His instinct would be to lay low. Dock and factory workers. Mercs and information brokers if he's brave enough, and he might not be."

"If it were me, I wouldn't be," Shepard muttered.

Garrus stalked toward the doors of the precinct. "I shouldn't have come. Rumors go through C-Sec as fast as they do any ship or military unit. And it's the job of any detective or officer to nose around in people's private business. If we weren't going to ask about Fade immediately, it was too risky to come here."

Shepard followed him through the doors. "You're right. It would have definitely been better to let Thane's kid murder someone and get locked away for it."

"Instead, his xenophobe target walked away, and the kid still got arrested," Garrus retorted.

"I wouldn't call Talid xenophobic," Shepard mused. "We saw him talking to all kinds of aliens out there. He just hates humans."

"Says the human," Garrus returned, exasperated.

Shepard folded her arms and leaned back on one leg. "Am I supposed to take every antihuman asshole as a personal affront?" Her tone was lazy and relaxed, but that pose screamed out danger.

 _Basic xenostudies, Vakarian: never tell another species how they're supposed to react to prejudices against them!_ Garrus threw up his hands. "No! I don't know! The point is, this whole thing was a massive waste of time."

A passing human officer raised his eyebrows at the two of them. Garrus glared at him.

"Not for Thane," Shepard said quietly. "Kolyat didn't kill anyone today. That matters to him. That matters, period."

"Fine. It does. But you didn't need me for this, Shepard. You didn't."

Shepard pressed her lips together. Her eyes were dark and stormy, her patience as exhausted as his was now. "Maybe I didn't. But I thought you needed to be here for this, Garrus. In an office or interrogation room here somewhere, an _assassin_ is _begging_ his son not to become a killer like he is, doing his damned best to save something instead of destroy it. I figured you could learn something."

Garrus threw his arm out at Shepard. "There it is. Shepard, I'm not asking for your approval. Not anymore. I never destroyed a damn thing that didn't need it. I didn't kill my team. I'm doing my best to make things _right_."

Shepard sighed. She straightened, unfolded her arms, and looked at him. "We will. First thing tomorrow. You have my word on that. All I'm saying is take some time to think about what you're doing. You need to be careful here."

Garrus looked back at her. "I understand you're worried, and I appreciate it. But I'm not you. I can handle this."

Shepard held his gaze for a moment. "I guess we'll see about that, won't we? First thing tomorrow?" She held out her hand.

Garrus shook it. "So long as it's the first thing."

Shepard walked away toward Bailey's office, leaving Garrus to his thoughts. He didn't go with her. _She wasn't there. She didn't see it. She doesn't know._

What did she want from him? For him to just forget Sidonis was out there, walk away like none of it had ever happened? Every time he caught his reflection, he remembered it had. He could feel the sickness in his stomach he'd felt that day when he realized he'd been lured away, realized what must be happening back at the base. He could see the bodies of his friends—Lantar's friends—sprawled and bleeding out all over the apartment and on the floors below. He could smell their blood, fire and gunpowder on the air. Sidonis had left Omega with a new name and a ride from the Eclipse and left them to rot.

 _You promised you'd follow me until the day you died, Lantar. You would have been better off keeping that promise. I'd've died right beside you, and been happy to do it. Now I'm following you, but it'll end a little differently for you._

* * *

A C-Sec officer brought Garrus take out while they waited for Thane and Kolyat to finish their talk. It was cheap and had gone cold, but it was still the best thing Garrus had tasted in a while. He ate in the C-Sec break room. Listened to C-Sec gossip for a while. Finally, sheer boredom brought him back to Bailey's office. He didn't know where they'd taken Thane and Kolyat, but Shepard was his ride. She was leaning up against the plate glass of Bailey's office. Garrus saw two empty containers of human takeout in the disposal bin nearby.

Shepard nodded out at the hall. "They've been in there a while," she observed to Bailey.

Bailey was absorbed in some paperwork, it looked like. Probably cataloguing the day's events. "Kid's been through a lot," he said. "I ran some searches in the C-Sec archives. About ten years back, a bunch of real bad people were killed, like someone was cleaning house. The prime suspect was a drell. We never caught him."

Shepard gazed across at the captain. "Ten years is a long time," she said coolly. "Whoever was responsible for that probably doesn't exist anymore." Her words were casual, but the order was implicit.

Bailey didn't seem disposed to fight a Spectre. _He's not the by-the-book type, though he's got a detective's drive if I've ever seen it._ "Yeah, I guess you're right about that."

Just then, a door whooshed open and shut behind them. Krios walked down the hall and into the office. "How'd it go?" Shepard asked him.

Krios was pensive. "Our problems are . . . they aren't something I can fix with a few words. We'll keep talking, see what happens."

Bailey had sat up straight. Now he steepled his fingers and looked over them at Krios. "Your boy fired some shots," he said matter-of-factly. "Didn't hit anyone I feel sympathy for, but there it is."

Shepard stood up. "I watched those guys shaking down businesses and threatening humans."

Bailey tilted his head in acknowledgment. "But he can't just get away with it."

Shepard spread her arms. "Kid wants to make a difference. Give him community service."

Bailey frowned. "Community service for attempted murder? What jury would agree to that?"

Shepard looked over at Krios, and walked up to the desk. "None that I've seen," she said, tapping the top of Bailey's monitor. "This would need to stay out of the judiciary. Strictly within C-Sec."

She stepped back. Bailey raised his eyebrows, and Garrus caught the shadow of a grin. "Interesting. I'll think about it."

Krios inclined his head. "Thank you, Captain."

* * *

The ride back to the _Normandy_ was as silent as the ride to the Citadel had begun that morning. Even Niels didn't venture to break the silence this time. _He_ does _learn. Is that nice or depressing?_

The rest of what was left of the day passed normally. Gun and armor maintenance, a chat with Goto, Tali, and Hawthorne in the mess at a dinner that was almost palatable. Garrus went through the dance mechanically. He started in on routine calibrations of the Thanix.

Shepard didn't visit him during rounds.

He only realized this when the door behind him opened and he blinked at the chrono on his visor and realized she was forty-five minutes overdue, and the person in his battery wasn't Shepard at all.

It was Krios.

Garrus turned to face the drell. "Something you needed?" he asked. He knew it wasn't friendly. The numbers weren't cooperating, and honestly, he was about out of friendly for the day.

"I wanted to thank you," Krios said. "You had other plans today, yet you took the time to help me with Kolyat."

"I'm glad we could help out."

Krios blinked slowly. His outer lids drew back before his inner ones. "Perhaps."

"I think Bailey will follow through on Shepard's suggestion," Garrus told him. "Might look into Talid's shady connections and illegal activity, too. If Kolyat turns it around after today, he'll probably be all right."

"But you feel you feel you lost time on your own purpose here, yes?" Krios walked toward the workbench. Garrus saw him take in the mod specs on the tabletop in a glance—armor-piercing ammo, upgraded optics. He nodded gravely. "There is someone you are hunting. Someone that could disappear—but must not. This morning, you seemed . . . unbalanced. You and the commander both. I am new to the _Normandy_ , but this tension—strife—between you. I'm given to understand it is unusual. Shepard is reluctant to help you?"

Garrus turned back to the console. He studied the propulsion readouts Daniels had sent him in her afternoon reports and plugged in an equation to calculate likely drift in any upcoming engagement. "Shepard's always better on the defense," he told Thane. "Rescuing civilians in Dantius Towers, on Horizon. Stopping some hostage situation from turning into a bloodbath. Saving someone's reputation." He glanced up from the console for a moment. "Keeping some stupid kid from throwing his life away. She has to be the good guy, give the second chance. Whether or not someone deserves it."

Krios stood perfectly still in the center of the walkway, hands clasped behind his back, weight balanced on the balls of his feet like a dancer. The people who had trained him were the same kind of people that had trained Ripper, and it showed—in the stillness, the quiet, the perpetual awareness and icy professionalism. Garrus wondered if Krios had relaxed a day in his life. If he'd even been allowed to. He didn't look armed, but it was impossible to ignore that Krios was always ready to kill in a second. His eyes didn't waver from Garrus's face.

"The one you are hunting does not, then. Their wickedness must be punished. Does it occur to you to wonder whether Shepard's insistence you remain with us today had less to do with this person's second chance and more to do with yours? She did not interfere in my hit on the Dantius woman."

Garrus glanced at the numbers Tali's cyclonic barrier was reporting and cursed under his breath. "Someplace like the Citadel, she might have," he told Thane. "Arrest Nassana and turn her over to the legal authorities. Probably the only reason she didn't is that Illium cops would've just let Nassana go again."

He tapped his finger on the top of the console, did a couple of quick calculations in his head, checked his work on his visor, then plugged a different firing algorithm into the simulator. An animation of a Collector vessel exploded into starbursts on the display. Garrus nodded, satisfied, and plugged the new algorithm into the Thanix. He turned around to face Thane again, leaning against the railing by the side of the gun.

"Theoretically, I was your best backup down there if something went to crap," he mused. "Investigation, interrogation, tailing a mark on the Citadel. Massani or Goto might've been able to help on one side or the other, but not all around. If you'd needed backup. I get that." His talons flexed around the railing. "But you're right: that's not why Shepard wanted me to stay." _And that's what really gets me. If they'd needed me down there—really needed me—if_ the kid _had needed me, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second. Well. Maybe a second. But the main reason I was there was Shepard wanted to stress a point. And I don't have time for one of Shepard's motivational courses right now._

Normally, Garrus appreciated Shepard's multifunctional mode of training. Using every groundside objective as a chance to build the team, and not just on the battlefield. He'd borrowed pretty heavily from the strategy on Omega. Forcing squad members who didn't trust one another to depend on one another. Letting raw recruits stretch their muscles on the safest missions with the best backup. Giving everyone a chance to work out whatever they needed to on the assignments best suited to it. The whole team came out stronger and better, both as individuals and together.

 _Being held to Shepard's standards of 'stronger' and 'better' doesn't work, though, when she doesn't have the context to decide what they should be. She can't. Not this time._

Krios had been watching him this entire time, face unreadable. "The commander is unhappy to be at odds with you; that much is obvious, even to me. She cares for you. Yet she stands in your way even so—or holds you back, at least. It seems to me she sees the benefit to you must outweigh the consequences of your displeasure. Such resolve is rare, as is such compassion."

Garrus stood up and turned back to the console. _Is it just me, or is thanks sounding like a lecture this season?_ The truth was, he could do with a little less of Shepard's resolve and compassion right now. _But that's petty, and none of his business._ "Thanks for your concern, but it shouldn't be a problem past tomorrow. Was there anything else? I'm kind of in the middle of some calibrations."

"So I see," Krios agreed. "You are the teeth of the _Normandy_ , on the ground and in the sky. I will let you return to work. I take it Shepard will aid you in your own hunt tomorrow. If either of you ask it, you will have my services as well. I merely wished to remind you of your good fortune before the morning. The commander may be right to wish _you_ to be careful, to believe there is something you might have gained today. She may be wrong. But that she is so careful of you—that is a gift. She is a beautiful woman, thoroughly admirable."

Garrus's hand slipped on the console, hitting two keys he didn't mean to. The recharge time on refiring inflated twenty minutes longer than they needed. Then he turned his head and looked Thane right in the eye. "I _know_ that."

Krios took two steps toward him. "Do you? Are you certain?"

The drell's tone was mild, but the steel underneath it was as clear of a challenge as Garrus had ever heard. Garrus's mandibles tightened. Reckless irritation, anger, and thwarted energy crackled through Garrus like a current. "I'm angry; I'm not an idiot," he snapped. "Yes. I'm _sure_."

The Thanix beeped for clarification. Garrus didn't drop his gaze. Finally, Krios nodded his head. "Indeed. You should probably attend to that. Good evening, Garrus."

He slipped out of the battery without a sound, leaving Garrus to clean up the calibrations.

* * *

 **A/N: If we got Awkward!Garrus last chapter, this chapter has a whole lot of Garrus-at-work. In the narrative of the main trilogy, we get caught up in these characters as they relate to Commander Shepard. We forget they have lives, interests, and histories of their own. That they might have strengths Shepard doesn't, their own personal lists of accomplishments and contacts, and continue to exist and do important duties on the** _ **Normandy**_ **when s/he walks away.**

 **It surprised me that Garrus presented so much professionalism this chapter; he's caught up in a** _ **lot**_ **of other things. Seriously, right now his head is a chaotic war zone of vengeance-obsession and frustration, guilt and self-hatred, moral and romantic uncertainty, and UST. Huh. Maybe it makes a lot of sense that he'd retreat to what he knows.**

 **Happy New Year! Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	30. Victim's Justice: The Hunter

XXX

Victim's Justice: The Hunter

Garrus had finally slipped into a doze when he was woken up again by a pounding on the battery door. Again, his hand lunged toward the workbench and a gun. "Whoa—what!?"

The curt, commanding voice on the other side of the door was unmistakable. "Garrus. Move your butt!" Garrus groaned but relaxed, blinking his burning eyes, and sat up. He pressed at the sore places on his back.

"I'm up, I'm up."

"Good. Get dressed and equip. I've got ariita brewing and already ordered a breakfast wrap from Gardner for you. We're moving out with Goto in twenty."

Garrus shoved his visor on. Local time blinked at him in neon orange. It was nearly 0700 hours. Breakfast for the retiring night shift would be over in an hour, _was_ over for the morning shift. They were going on duty now. C-Sec's Captain Bailey would be, too. Garrus had lain in an insomniatic stupor longer than he'd thought.

He dressed and neatened his bunk mechanically, only spared about ninety seconds to check the calibration algorithms on the Thanix.

 _Goto._ Krios might have volunteered, but bringing Goto made a lot more sense, and felt like Shepard. Like Thane, Kasumi moved in the underworld. She could be useful tracking Fade, but if it came to combat, she provided a slightly different skill set. She was an engineer, not a third sniper. _And, probably more to the point, Shepard knows that while Goto and I get along, it'll be easy having her along then, say, Tali._

 _And is there a reason you have a problem with Tali seeing what happens today?_

Garrus was used to the snide voices of self-doubt and self-loathing in his head, but for some reason, this morning, the voice of his inner negativity sounded much more like it had on Omega _. Damn it, Shepard, you're across the ship by now. Couldn't stay there until it's time to question everything I do again, could you?_

Garrus examined the stock of the Mantis. He'd reconfigured it for armor-piercing ammo last night. Sidonis would be dead before he knew what had hit him. _Better than he deserves, but we don't have time to draw things out._ He could feel the kickback now from the perfect headshot, see Lantar's body on the ground.

Garrus clipped the rifle to his back, equipped the Mattock, too. Just in case. Then he walked out of the battery.

* * *

Garrus didn't taste Gardner's wrap, muttered a single word each in response to Niels's and Goto's greetings down in the shuttle bay. He felt Shepard's eyes on him all the way down to Zakera, but he didn't look at her, and she didn't say a word.

She led them right back to Bailey. The captain managed a smile when they walked into his office. "Back again, huh?" he asked. "What is it today? Gambling? Extortion? A bit soon for another assassination."

"Forgery today, Captain," Shepard told him. "We're looking for a local criminal. Goes by the name of Fade?"

Bailey grimaced. "Yeah, I know him. The alias, anyway. He's been a thorn in the network division's side for the last year. He works with the Blue Suns."

Shepard glanced at Garrus. "Great. Because we needed another run-in with them."

Garrus tapped his talon on Bailey's desk. "Where can we find him?"

Bailey snorted. "Yeah, if I knew that, he'd be in a cell. Best I can do is put you on the trail. There's a warehouse in the marketplace. Some of Fade's contacts work out of there." He brought up a navpoint on his omni-tool and floated it over to Shepard's. "Go ask them some questions." He narrowed his eyes at Garrus. "Gently, of course."

Shepard looked at the navpoint speculatively. "Why haven't you found this guy?"

Bailey shook his head in disgust. "Whoever he is, he's damn good at avoiding C-Sec. I think someone on the inside's feeding him information. Either that or he's got access to our databases and comm channels—I don't know which is worse. But you're outside C-Sec. Maybe you can nail his ass."

"We'll try," Shepard promised.

Bailey nodded. "You need anything else, let me know."

As they walked away, Goto looked from Shepard to Garrus. "So, let me get this straight: we're going after this forger, Fade, because he gave a new identity to someone Garrus needs to find?"

"That's about the size of it," Garrus agreed.

Goto shifted so her hand was closer to her pistol. "But this guy probably has an army of deadly mercs protecting his operations."

"That's what it sounds like," Shepard confirmed, without enthusiasm.

"Oh. Business as usual then."

They were able to catch a taxi to the market level where Bailey had told them the warehouse was. Despite several shops doing quiet business in the immediate vicinity, the address Bailey had given them looked abandoned. No workers or truckers anywhere around. "This looks like the place," Garrus said. "The forger's thugs should be inside."

Shepard glanced back at him, and without a word, drew her pistol. Goto did the same. Garrus drew his six-shot. Hopefully, they wouldn't have to use it, but it was nice to be prepared.

There were the requisite boxes and crates piled around the sides of the warehouse, but in the center of the floor around a plain, unadorned desk stood two armed krogan and a volus.

Shepard frowned. "Fade?" she asked, addressing the volus. "You're not quite how I imagined you."

Garrus didn't relax for a second. Once upon a time, he'd underestimated a volus. That had been an embarrassing day, and he'd used the lesson he'd learned from it several times over the last couple of years. Still, the volus shifted from foot to foot. Garrus didn't think this was their guy, though the volus obviously wasn't unfamiliar with the nickname.

"Looks can be deceiving," the volus said. "So: which one of you wants to disappear?"

Garrus jerked his head, drawing the volus's attention. "I'd rather see you make someone reappear."

The volus clicked his claws together nervously. The krogan bodyguards were taking them in with tiny, bloodshot eyes. Normally, two krogan would have no trouble with a couple of slight human females and a single turian. But Garrus could see the krogan taking in their stances, their armor, and their guns. He saw the notion make it through their thick skulls that they weren't dealing with routine mercenary scum or C-Sec or Alliance grunts here.

The volus cleared his throat. "Ah. That's not the service we provide."

Garrus made a point of cocking his pistol. "Make an exception. Just this once." He wasn't going to shoot this idiot. But the volus didn't need to know that.

The volus crouched behind the desk. "Damn it!" he cried in an irate tone. "Shoot them! Shoot them, you lumbering mountains!"

But Goto's omni-tool was glowing around her forearm, and she had her pistol trained on the head of one of the krogan. Shepard was covering the other, expression grim. Garrus twitched his pistol toward the door. "Why don't you two find somewhere else to skulk?" he suggested.

The krogan looked at one another. Garrus watched them decide they didn't want to die today. They shrugged. One pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, and the two of them walked out the open door of the warehouse. "What?" the volus yelped. "Just like that? You're not getting paid for this!" He stood, trembling, to face Garrus and the others again. "What's the point of hiring protection if they won't protect you?" he sighed.

Shepard rolled her eyes and holstered her pistol. "We're looking for someone. A client of yours," she explained again.

The volus's eyes darted back to Garrus. "Not mine!" he stressed. "I'm not Fade. I just work for him . . . sort of."

Shepard put a hand on her hip, irritated. "I knew it."

Garrus gestured with his pistol at the volus. "Well then maybe you'd like to tell us where to find him."

The volus held up his hands. "Y-yes, of course," he said hastily. "He's in the factory district. Works out of the old prefab foundry."

Garrus thought back to emergency maps of the Citadel he'd memorized back in C-Sec. Zakera had never been his stomping grounds, but the abandoned business the volus mentioned was a fairly big factory where Zakera cops had had trouble with smugglers before. "I know the place," he told Shepard.

The volus raised his hand timidly. "Oh, he's got a lot of mercs there," he volunteered. "Blue Suns. Harkin thinks they're protecting him."

 _Ralph Harkin. That's a twist._

Shepard frowned. "How the hell did Harkin end up being the Fade?" she demanded.

Garrus looked at her out of the corner of his eye, surprised she knew the name, but the volus's head bobbed up and down several times. "Well, he got fired from C-Sec a while back," he explained helpfully. "He used his knowledge of C-Sec and their systems to help a few people disappear. Then he made himself disappear, and Fade was born. So to speak."

"Interesting, but it changes nothing," Garrus told Shepard. "We still need to find him before we can get to Sidonis."

Shepard sighed. "I guess we need to pay Harkin a visit."

"We'll need to go to the transit station. I can get us to him from there."

The volus raised his hand again. "So I—uh, I can go?"

Garrus looked down at the volus. He was a coward and a criminal, but he'd been helpful enough. Unless he was lying—but Garrus didn't think so. He shrugged and lowered his gun. "Sure, but if we don't find Harkin, we'll be back for you," he said, twitching it up again.

The volus leaned back against the desk. "Oh . . . good." He sounded sick.

Garrus didn't care.

* * *

"So, who's this Harkin guy?" Kasumi ventured once Garrus had taken over driving one of the common-use skycars at the transit hub.

"One of my old coworkers in C-Sec," Garrus told her, pulling out into traffic smoothly. "One of the first humans to be admitted, so they gave him a lot of favors, but he was bad news."

"Suspended when I met him," Shepard added. "Sounded like he'd been caught embezzling and abusing suspects in addition to the drunkenness I saw. He told me how to find you at Dr. Michel's office, but I can't say I was sorry to say goodbye." Her tone made the rest clear. Garrus glanced at her. When Harkin had been drunk, he'd been caught out for harassment of asari and human female employees too.

"Sounds like a charming guy," Kasumi said drily. "But if he was C-Sec, that explains how he gets around them now. Can't be as stupid as he sounds."

Garrus tightened his hands on the wheel. "I guess we'll see, won't we?"

The morning rush hour was over, and the factory district didn't get a whole lot of traffic. They arrived at the abandoned foundry the volus had said was Harkin's base in less than twenty minutes. Hovering over the building, Garrus saw movement through the grimy commercial windows. Lights. But no business trucks—just a line of nondescript gray and black skycars parked out back. Easy to mistake for civilian models, if you weren't familiar with aircraft armor. As Garrus lowered the public skycar into the parking lot, he saw a red light on the corner of the building start flashing. "They're here."

Shepard already had her rifle out and on her lap. Goto popped another clip into her Locust as the back door to the foundry opened, and four Blue Suns and a middle-aged human male in dirty black fatigues made their appearance to see who'd come visiting.

 **RALPH HARKIN, HUMAN, Affil. Citadel Security (former)**

 **-Search?**

 **-Construct targeting solution?**

Garrus didn't need the readout on his visor to identify his former coworker, and the fear that blossomed over Harkin's face when he caught sight of them was confirmation enough the volus had told the truth. _Harkin_ was Fade. Harkin was the bastard that could get him to Sidonis.

Shepard leapt out of the skycar. "There he is!"

At three times magnification, Garrus could see the sweat break out on Harkin's face, yellowed and lined prematurely with substance abuse. He saw the confusion there as Harkin squinted at him—shook his head—and zeroed in on the dead Spectre at his flank. "Shepard?"

Shepard held up her hands, but Harkin was already staggering back. "Don't just stand there!" he yelled at his mercs. "Stop them! Stop them!"

He dodged behind a turian, turned his back, and broke out into a dead run back into the foundry. "Run all you want, Harkin! We'll find you!" Garrus yelled after him as the first fire broke out in the parking lot. He dodged behind a shipping crate.

 _Four outside. Judging from the skycars, could be thirty or more inside._

 _Thirty's nothing._

His visor gave him the readout on the four outside the door. A batarian and a turian—shielded. Assault rifles and active omni-tools. Two humans without the tech with heavy pistols. Garrus crouched down behind one of the Blue Suns skycars and listened to the bullets cracking the fortified glass and demolishing the paint job on it. The batarian roared. Garrus smiled, and synced his visor up with his omni-tool to arc an overload program under the vehicle and up toward the source of the cursing.

Off to the right, a human's head exploded back over the wall next to the entrance to the warehouse. The headless torso fell like a limp mannequin to the floor, twitching. It might be another half-second before the nerve endings realized the body was dead. Shepard's Widow was overkill at these quarters against unshielded human combatants.

 _But damn, I love that sound._

Garrus leaned out from behind the vehicle to fire at the distracted batarian as the other human yelped, and an omni-tool-fabricated, ultra-durable, burning, orange combat knife slashed across the weak throat of his armor. Crimson blood sprayed forward, and Goto appeared behind the human. She quickly turned him around to serve as a flesh shield, cover against the turian, then let go. Before he'd even hit the ground, Kasumi had vaulted a crate and somersaulted away.

Garrus saw a blue flash around the turian as Shepard snatched his shields away, and he took the shot she'd lined up for him. He walked forward as Shepard and Goto came up on his flanks.

Garrus glanced over at Kasumi. "Nice moves."

"I do my best," she smiled. She looked at the door. "What do you think it's like in there?"

"No telling. This place shut down a few years ago, but it's not the first time C-Sec's had trouble with squatting criminals here. Lots of old industrial equipment, and it'd be easy enough to tap into somebody else's power and get some of it working again. Could be some nasty surprises. Normally, I wouldn't advocate chasing someone into home ground we haven't scouted yet. But there's a first time for everything."

Shepard looked up at him, an odd expression on her face. "You want to take point in there?"

"If you don't mind. Three of us, I generally would anyway. And it might throw Harkin off. He seems fixated on you."

Shepard tilted her head in a sort of half-shrug. "Mmm. Spectre. It might not last. Don't know how much these guys have heard. But for now, let's go with it. We'll follow your lead."

Garrus nodded, exchanged his Mantis for the Mattock, and the three of them walked into the foundry.

Garrus took one look around the inside of the warehouse. One thing was abundantly clear.

 _This was stupid._

 _Have I_ seen _a worse place to get in a firefight?_ Upon reflection, he'd _been_ in worse environs—but they hadn't started out that way. Something had always happened to _make_ them worse, like a multi-gang free-for-all or an artificial gravity malfunction. Here, though, it was going to be a crapshoot from the start.

The Suns had the machinery in here working—conveyer belts running overhead and around the walls to create an atmosphere of constant movement and make it harder to spot any enemies. Empty crates of all different sizes were in tall stacks of different heights all around the room. No obvious sight lines. They'd have to maneuver around the room slowly, and snipers could be at any level. _And a lot of these crates are big enough to hold enemy personnel._

"Great," Shepard said lightly, taking in the room like he was. "Well. I'd hate if this was boring. Stay on your toes."

They took the easiest path available to them, to the left along the back wall. Shepard kept her eyes focused on the towers of crates to their right. "They can't be using all this stuff," Goto murmured. "But they're paying the bills to keep it running. They've got this place rigged, guys."

Just then, a cargo container ahead slid open. Three sets of red, electric optics glowed out of the darkness. **LOKI MECH** , Garrus's visor warned him. He was already firing. Goto, too. The cheap mechs went down in a crunch of sparks as new fire broke out to the right around the corner. Garrus crouched down behind a couple of angled crates. Behind him, Shepard flickered, and he switched on his heat sensor and saw her orange-red outline vault silently up on top of a crate stack nearby and lay flat on top.

Her Widow sounded once. Twice. "You're clear," she said. "Let's avoid the aisles where we can, though. That's where they want us to go. Take the corner, then there should be a route up and over straight ahead."

"Affirmative."

The Blue Suns were possibly the best-organized criminal merc group in the galaxy. Their leaders were almost all former military or quasimilitary terrorists. They had some of the best equipment and training you were likely to see outside of smaller, more privately funded organizations. On Omega, they kept whole sections of the station ground down into the dirt, funding their ops off protection rackets, piracy, smuggling, slavery, and extortion. Brutalizing those who couldn't fight back.

In C-Sec, he'd fought for years to keep the Suns and cancers like them from growing on the Citadel. Seeing them so strong here, now, was only a little better than if he'd found a recruitment center down his old street in Cipritine.

 _But wiping them out is going to feel_ good _._

Garrus climbed fluidly up and over the path Shepard had pointed out—over the crates instead of around them. More tiring, but they wouldn't be playing the Suns' game and would have better sightlines. Ahead, he saw the snakelike aisle the Suns had left open. He also saw the gunners they'd stationed off to the left and right and the two LOKIs marching through the aisle down below.

"Keep them off me, will you?" Goto murmured, gesturing at the Suns in the distance and flipping down into the aisle, omni-tool at the ready. Garrus was already constructing a targeting solution. Shepard's position gave her better sightlines to the guys on the right, so as Kasumi chopped the LOKIs into so many spare parts and faded out of the crossfire, Garrus waited for the guys on the left to stand.

He fired. The sound of most of the gunfire in the foundry was absorbed into the sounds of the running machinery, but Garrus marked where his targets fell and knew they wouldn't be getting up again. The Widow was an exception, and it cracked out twice more in quick succession. Garrus dispassionately watched the Blue Suns fall and jumped down to join Goto in the aisle. In his periphery, he saw Shepard climbing down from the cargo crates behind them, falling back into their shadows and fading out once again. He almost smiled.

 _Harkin's got these mercs looking for her. So she'll let them keep looking._

He saw movement ahead—another crate opening on the right. Before it was even completely open, one of the LOKI mechs inside jerked—Shepard, hacking its friend-or-foe and targeting protocols. Garrus flicked his wrist to overload the systems of one of the others, and Goto followed his lead. The hacked mech's optics flashed in confusion, then it turned and fired at a turian Garrus hadn't seen yet, up ahead.

Garrus retargeted and fired in an instant. The three-bullet pulse took the target in the throat, forehead, and jaw. Garrus wasn't sure which bullet killed the guy, but as the merc fell back trying to swallow his own teeth down a throat that didn't exist anymore, Garrus was sure it wasn't the LOKI's. They were programmed to find the center of mass and had all impacted on armor. Before the mech's reboot programming overrode Shepard's hack, Goto took it down.

Shepard's voice came over the radio, speaking in an undertone. "A lot of tech for a small-time forger."

"No kidding," Goto agreed. "Keeping the machines running like this isn't cheap, either. Wonder what else your friend is into."

Garrus shook his head. "I could take a guess. Harkin will pay for this. He's in here somewhere. I can smell him."

There was a drop-off to the left now—the bottom of a bay that opened overhead. No shuttles in sight, and the overhead conveyer belts weren't moving, either. Instead, they were looking at a single lane moving ahead on the right. The Suns had left themselves cover here, but it was nowhere near the jungle it had been. "Any surprises are on our right," Garrus told the others, noting the LOKI-sized cargo containers were only on one side of them now.

"Copy."

Of course, the Suns in cover ahead chose to make their appearance at the same time the expected cargo container opened. Garrus slid into cover without missing a beat and set about eliminating the crossfire with Shepard. Goto blinked out beside him, and in less than five seconds, a Suns' strangled scream turned into a gurgle. Kasumi burned the blood off of her omni-tool and executed a double backflip past the foot soldier's horrified buddies back into cover. Garrus took the opportunity to wipe the shock off the face of one of them.

"Fall back!" he heard someone shout. "They're tearing us apart!"

"This is our turf!" Harkin snarled over a loudspeaker. "You going to let _three people_ take it?!"

"Aarrgh! Open fire!" a batarian yelled. Shepard's Widow retorted—with a lot more efficiency. Garrus saw the fine, red mist where his head had been.

At the edge of the bay, the foundry opened up again into the obstructive stacks of crates the Suns had piled up at the entrance. Garrus saw a conveyer belt overhead again, and coming down it, a white, metal chassis curled up into a cube.

Goto was already out ahead again, cloaked and hunting a shielded turian officer yelling into his com by the wall. "Watch out!" Garrus shouted as the cube dropped to the floor with a sickening smack and expanded into a YMIR assault mech—behind cover from where he stood, but perfectly in line to fire at Goto. "Heavy mech incoming!"

"Online," the mech said in a detached, synthetic basso. Its guns spread out, focused, and fired at Goto—out of cover and uncloaked, still standing over the turian. The sound of its heavy fire reverberated off the metal-and-concrete walls of the foundry warehouse. Garrus leapt to the top of a crate to see Kasumi's shields fail—and two other Suns behind a desk.

 _Not again!_

He twisted his omni-tool as he jumped again, saw his overload hit with Shepard's energy drain, but the mech was still firing. Kasumi was crab-walking backward, trying to get to cover. She cried out in pain. Garrus slid past the YMIR mech into the line of fire. He saw his shields glowing blue with each impact, and his armor grew warm around him.

 **WARNING! HEAVY FIRE!**

 **79 . . . 62 . . . 45%**

Another shot impacted against his torso.

 **31%**

Firing one-handed, Garrus wrenched Goto to her feet with the other arm.

 **9%**

Half-throwing, half-pushing her as she staggered to cover, he vaulted in beside her as a fireball and a rocket impacted against the mech within a half-second of each other, finally drawing its attention away.

"There she is!" a human shouted. "Take her out!"

Garrus glanced hastily at Goto. His visor, heat sensors still enabled, highlighted blunt-force trauma in several places over her right side—bicep, chest, hip, and thigh—but only one open wound: a graze to her jaw dripping blood beneath her hood. He pulled up a medi-gel application, shoved it at her, and rose to his feet—ignoring that his shields had only regenerated to 13 percent—saw the YMIR's optics flashing red, and immediately dived back down, turning his heavily armored back to the explosion of the overloaded battle mech.

He felt his shields fritz out, felt the heat of the blast, and heard a double crack over the drone of the foundry machinery. Then just the machinery for a second that seemed to stretch forever. He stood, gun raised, and heard two boots hit the ground behind him.

"What's the damage?"

Garrus reached down to help Goto to her feet, but she smiled and shook her head, climbing to her feet herself. "I'm fine, Shepard," she said. "Thanks to you and Garrus. That was a close one. But no real harm done."

Shepard examined the congealing graze on Goto's face. "That's really the worst of it? You took some serious fire there, Kasumi."

Goto smirked, dusting off her front and straightening her hood. "I know you think I wear this just to look pretty, but there's more tech in here than you'd think. I know some people that don't believe in sacrificing function for fashion. It's come in handy in a couple business deals to be armored better than a client thinks I am."

Garrus stared. Shook his head. He took a breath. "You don't say. We should move on."

Kasumi took a shaky step and couldn't hide her wince. "No problem," she said bravely.

Garrus turned away. She'd live, all right. She'd have bruises for a couple days, but the graze probably wouldn't even scar. But "close" didn't _come_ close to describing what had just happened. _And it's your fault._

 _Goto could've gotten hit on any ground mission we've been on. The way she uses that tactical cloak is more suited for sabotage, infiltration, and assassination than all-out combat. It was bound to bite her in the ass sooner or later._

 _But it didn't. She's usually more careful. She's been taking risks today. Don't you wonder why?_

 _Shut up. I didn't ask for her help. I didn't ask anyone but Shepard to be here._

 _And you almost got her killed too._

 _I didn't set this ambush. I didn't run like coward. I didn't open fire._

 _Tell me you weren't happy Harkin ran. Tell me you weren't hoping you had to chase him._

 _This isn't me! I'm here to put things right!_

 _Tell that to Shepard and Goto. Come on,_ Archangel _, you sang that song for two years. What exactly have you put right?_

"Guardhouse?"

Shepard's quiet question broke in on his thoughts. He looked over at her, and she nodded at a room off to the left, past the wall ahead.

Garrus hummed. "Looks like it. This building's a bit big for one company. Could be two businesses split it and a third party guarded both ops from here. Good place to set up a trap."

Shepard scanned the area with her omni-tool. "Not picking up any hostiles or nasty surprises. Door's locked, but that's easy to fix. Think we've spooked Harkin pretty bad."

"We have to have taken out half the force parked outside, unless they've brought in reinforcements."

Shepard finished hacking the door. "Look around for any useful tech for the professor," she told Goto. "If this post's abandoned now, it's been manned until pretty recently. Good place to find schematics or creds."

"Can I say I really like this part?" Kasumi said, a smile in her voice, as she moved to comply.

"Keep an eye out for more Suns—ahead and behind us," Shepard instructed her. "Garrus is right—they might have reinforcements they could call in."

Garrus eyed the heat sinks on the desk in the empty guardhouse, the chair tilted back like someone had been reclining in it just ten minutes ago. "The scale of this operation is unbelievable."

Forgery wasn't usually large-scale, but with the mechs and manpower here, Goto had been right earlier—Harkin had to be making a killing. Probably into smuggling, connections with weapons dealing, trafficking. With a former officer getting them past C-Sec systems, the Blue Suns could establish a presence here that would let them hold entire neighborhoods by the throat. Bring hard drugs into the wards. Strengthen organized crime.

 _Whether_ I'm _right or not,_ this _is wrong. That Harkin left C-Sec to help these bastards is worse. That Lantar ran_ here _, paid_ them _to hide him from what he did on Omega, is worst of all._

The guardhouse window had a shutter, closed for now. Garrus flipped it open and crouched beneath it, looking out over the other room in the foundry. "What the hell is Harkin up to?" By this time, Harkin had had enough time to set up an ambush. Or worse.

Behind him, he heard Kasumi downloading the tech off a foundry terminal for the professor. Shepard came over and knelt by his side. "So. Harkin has finally gone completely bad."

Garrus shook his head. "He was always a pain in the ass, but I'm in no mood for his games. If he doesn't cooperate, I'll beat him within an inch of his life."

"Garrus."

Garrus glanced at her. The reprimand was implicit— _we don't do that_ —but if she thought she was going to stop him, she had another think coming. "Harkin may know why Sidonis wanted to disappear. If so, he knows why we're here, and I don't want him tipping Sidonis off." In the next room, past some cargo crates, Garrus saw a flash of ceramic moving in a direction opposite from the conveyer lines overhead. "Did you see that?" he demanded.

Shepard's weight shifted to her back leg, and she adjusted her grip on her rifle. "I saw something."

"He's getting ready for us."

Shepard made a face. "Say he doesn't cooperate when we get up there. What will you do?"

On Omega, it wouldn't have been a question. When you'd cornered a rat, you didn't leave him alive to spread plague another day. _And no mistake, Harkin's spreading a plague_. "He's a real criminal now, working for the Blue Suns. I should just shoot him on sight." He grimaced. "But—I need him alive, so I won't do any permanent damage. Just enough to loosen his tongue." Not particularly elegant, but they didn't have the luxury of time, resources, and a backup investigator.

Goto finished her download and took up a position by the rear door. She closed it and began fiddling with her omni-tool. Garrus's visor registered the jamming program she was using—much more sophisticated than the door's actual lock—shutting out any incoming reinforcements and cutting off an escape route for Harkin and the Suns

Shepard bent closer to Garrus. "I know we don't like the Blue Suns, and shooting the guys that are trying to shoot us is one thing. But this isn't Omega. There are laws here."

Technically, _Shepard's_ only authority was the Citadel Council, Garrus thought—and she pissed them off, but they were terrified of her, too. But because he was on her crew, he could only go as far as she let him. Fortunately, he knew his man. "Don't worry—Harkin's a coward. He'll talk long before I can really hurt him."

Shepard shook her head slightly. "That's not the point. Sidonis—you're still going to kill him?"

 _Because we came all this way to have a cup of ariita and exchange contact info to keep in touch._ "That's the plan. It'll be quick and painless. Unlike everyone he betrayed, he'll be spared the agony of a slow death. It's more than he deserves, but as long as he's dead, I'll be satisfied."

And fine, he would've enjoyed the chase. _Letting Lantar feel how they felt when they realized the mercs were coming and there was no way out._ He would've enjoyed dropping Sidonis off a building, perforating him beyond recognition, shooting him in the gut and waiting for him to bleed out, dazed and hallucinating. Maybe all three. Letting Sidonis die like the others had died. But all that was just extra. It didn't matter. Not really. All that mattered was balancing the ledger, and all that would take was one fast, clean bullet.

"You think that will help?" Shepard asked. "Killing him like that?"

Garrus looked at her. "I know you don't like it, Shepard, but I have to do this."

The silence stretched for a long moment as the two of them peered out at the room beyond. Garrus felt Goto's eyes flicking back to them every few seconds as she shifted in the doorway. "Is there no other way?" Shepard asked finally, her voice low.

Once upon a time, Garrus had seen Shepard gun down a man in cold blood. A gang member, a former associate that had made an extortion attempt to get her to use her Spectre influence to forward their now-xenophobic agenda—and probably in the long run to tie her back into the gang.

 _She needed a drink afterward_.

Shepard had been a special operative—a commando—for years, and a sniper. Her mission files after Anderson had recruited her were mostly classified. But Garrus had figured out pretty early on it probably hadn't been a lot of wet work. _Or if it was, it was_ bad.

Like any good officer, Shepard took responsibility for the actions of her subordinates. _But we moved past officer and subordinate a long time ago, Shepard, and that was_ your _call._ She had to understand he was moving independently here. _No one's going to hold her accountable for this._

"Maybe, but this is personal. I'll pull the trigger, and I'll live with the consequences," Garrus promised. "All I'm asking is that you help me find him."

Shepard looked sideways at him. "Okay," she said finally. She nodded at the room ahead. "What do you think Harkin's got waiting for us in there?"

"Not sure. It looks like an industrial complex: heavy machinery. Could be anything. Something's in there, probably more Blue Suns. Harkin's kind of trapped himself in a corner; he must have something in store for us." Both of them were in a bad position, tactically speaking. Garrus had flagged the exits flying in—without jumping out a window, Harkin had no way out now. But it was his base.

Shepard made a face. " _Love_ the new battle plan, Garrus," she said under her breath. She rolled her shoulders and nodded at Kasumi, edged around the window and back toward the door. "Let's do this."

"Oh, is it time for another blind charge into a booby-trapped warehouse?" Kasumi asked brightly. "I'm so glad you woke me up this morning, Shepard. I would have hated to miss out."

"Just stay sharp, and don't get shot again," Garrus sighed. "But watch your targets. We can't kill Harkin until we have what we need."

He felt Shepard's doubtful glance at his back as he walked out into the back half of the foundry. He slowed half a step as he realized what he'd said. Then he kept walking.

* * *

 **A/N: Not sure how I feel about this. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on Garrus: the hyperobservant detective; the black sheep; the awkward, nerdy, second-guessing, philosophizing guy with a love of sarcasm and sniper rifles, just about drowning in self-doubt. His alter ego Archangel is something else entirely: all black-and-white conviction; emotion; action and ruthless reaction. He doesn't think. He** _ **knows**_ **. He doesn't reflect. He** _ **does**_ **. And then Garrus is left trying to analyze the aftermath of the storm—when he's brave enough to even look at it and strong enough not to be swept away on the tide. Archangel is almost beyond me to write—he's a creature of primal absolutes with no nuance at all and no space between thought and decision. From his perspective, there's almost nothing** _ **to**_ **write. And this chapter, while Garrus is still hanging in there—barely—Archangel is very close to the surface. I kind of feel like my writing suffers for it. And like Garrus needs a couple years of intensive therapy.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	31. Victim's Justice: The Quarry

XXXI

Victim's Justice: The Quarry

Overhead, machinery hummed. A bullet whistled past Garrus's skull. He tracked the trajectory immediately. Dodged left, ducked, and brought up his omni-tool in a single movement. Halfway across the room, a batarian cried out as his shields sizzled and disappeared. Goto's Locust broke out behind Garrus as he slid into cover behind a large, armored crate—weapons or medication transport.

The back part of Harkin's hideout was laid out differently than the front. The meandering aisles were gone. Garrus looked out at a series of gradated platforms climbing up, and at the back and top of the room, looking over the foundry, the overseer's office. Harkin would be there—the most defensible position in the room.

Garrus's visor tagged six, seven life signs spread out over the platforms leading up to the office. Snipers and assault troops. They had altitude, cover, entrenched 'd be more mechs. Three more shots buzzed by, and swinging from the conveyer lines overhead, more crates hung suspended.

EDI's voice came over the radio. "Shepard, I have patched into the warehouse scanners," she reported. "The crates in the transport carriers overhead are rigged to explode when dropped."

A second Locust joined in the chorus with the first. Garrus registered Shepard's weapon change automatically. On the far right side of the room, one of the flying crates ignited. It plummeted from its snapped wire cable to crash on top of two human Suns stationed on a platform beneath. One of them had time to scream. Garrus used the second of confusion to clip his assault rifle back into place and extend the Mantis.

Shepard's voice over the radio was grim. "Good to know."

In the wake of the exploded crate, three more transport carriers came swooping down from the office at the top of the room. Each of them carried a LOKI, folded up to absorb impact on the ground.

Harkin's voice snarled over the foundry loudspeaker, addressing them directly this time. "Why don't you just turn around?"

Goto let out an irritated huff over the radio. "Okay, this guy's annoying me now."

"Only now?" returned Shepard. The LOKIs fell from the transport carriers. Before they landed, she'd stolen the power of one to boost her shields. It fell sparking to the ground, and Shepard passed on Garrus's left, firing at another.

"Shepard—" he warned change in weapons, the aggressive stance—the room had changed and Shepard was changing tactics. And now five Blue Suns up above and two LOKIs had Shepard lined up in a nice little crossfire. She sent eight bullets into the central processor of her target and faded out, but not before at least ten shots cut into the area where she was.

Garrus bit back a curse and focused on the plan—infrared showed Shepard moving smoothly into cover around the left side of the room, while three Suns were still completely exposed, firing at the place she had been. He lined up the first shot without thinking, fired. The Mantis tore through a batarian's shields and tunneled into his head in one shot. There was a fountain of red, and he died before he could cry out.

Garrus ejected a heat sink, reloaded, and retargeted in a second. Fired. This second shot was harder—the angle was a disadvantage, and the human could easily drop into cover. But no—just like before, the shot took out the shields. It went up through the target's throat into the mouth and through the skull. Garrus was already turning to take the third shot—but no. The LOKI, the turian, and the two humans remaining had registered he was the sniper now and reevaluated him as the biggest threat in the room. His target had dropped into cover. A crackling blue tech attack was rocketing toward him. Garrus dodged, as Shepard started her second press.

She vaulted up onto the first platform, fully visible again, shields only half restored, and one of the humans yelled. "There she is!" She diverted the energy from the last LOKI to boost her shields again—but three more mechs were coming in from the top of the room.

On a platform to the right, the air flickered. "No—there!" Goto decloaked, already firing.

Garrus smiled, stepped out from cover, and started moving to a better position.

"I'm not running from you, Shepard!" Harkin shouted. Fear and fury and disbelief crackled through his voice on the loudspeaker. One of the first humans in C-Sec, a cold place in the back of Garrus's brain recalled. A political test case. An addict. A criminal. Had he ever seen the way real soldiers operated?

 _Pay attention, Harkin. It isn't likely you'll get another chance._

As Garrus pulled up onto a platform, he heard one of the humans go down. Shepard and Goto had caught him in a crossfire. Goto was in more trouble than Shepard was; she faded out, and Garrus took down the shields of the Sun firing on her as she did. Lined up a shot, killed his target as Shepard hacked one of the three new mechs below to turn on the others.

Shepard fell into formation on his left flank. They were looking down at a place where the platforms fell off—a stretch of open, low ground before the last three platforms climbing up to the foreman's office. The last Sun standing was stationed off to the left behind some crates. Pale. Gripping his assault rifle way too tight in shaking hands. Goto flickered back into visibility on Garrus's right. Twisted her wrist and exploded one of the LOKIs down below.

Garrus looked down at the Sun. The human screamed, a wordless shriek of defiance and despair, opened fire in a wide arc that went over their heads by more than a meter, and cut in a dead run back toward the exit. Garrus clocked his trajectory, turned, and fired a single shot. The last man fell forward, facedown. _Well. He would have done if he had still had a face_.

Shepard and Goto had taken care of the LOKIs below. "Come on," Goto said, impatient, starting forward.

"Hold!" Shepard snapped. Kasumi stopped up short and threw an inquiring glance over her shoulder. Garrus was busy watching the ceiling.

"Ah, crap!" he cried, seeing the transport carriers inbound again, carrying metal chassises a lot bigger than the LOKIs. "Two heavy mechs, incoming!"

"Do you really think you can take me down, Shepard?" Harkin screamed.

"That, right?" Goto asked, pointing her Locust at the YMIRs dropping from the ceiling.

"That," Garrus agreed. "Take cover!" He jumped over a crate, taking his own advice as the mechs hit the floor of the foundry, unfolded, and opened fire. The sound of four simultaneous mass effect accelerator machine guns going off cut over everything else. Garrus winced and set his teeth against the aural assault. He signaled at Goto. _You and me._ He brought up his omni-tool and waved it at her, hoping she got the message. Saw her blink, then nod. A soldier would have signaled a thumbs-up or _okay_ , but when a tech attack flew out from her omni-tool, taking down the shields of one of the mechs below to half strength, Garrus decided Goto probably understood. He followed up to finish the job as the rockets started flying from where Shepard was stationed on the left.

The YMIRs staggered back as rocket after rocket impacted right on top of them. But when both of them retargeted on Shepard's position, the crate she was crouched behind didn't last two seconds.

Then, overhead, Garrus saw it. He targeted and fired in an instant, and another explosive crate fell, severed from the conveyer line above. It detonated right on top of theYMIRs—and two cannons stopped firing in the blast. The other mech was blown back almost a meter. "Defenses offline," it said confusedly. It staggered, catching its balance just in time to catch twelve bullets from Goto's Locust and another two rockets too. It exploded, and the sound fell away to the slightly less deafening dull roar of moving machinery.

"Now?" Goto asked.

"Now," Shepard told her.

The three of them dropped down to the ground and started toward the last platforms climbing to the foreman's office. As they approached, the platforms shrieked and began to rise—programmed at the last minute to slow them down. Garrus heard Kasumi scoff. She caught hold of the rebar and simply began climbing—but Garrus saw something else off to the right: a corridor the Suns had tried to hide behind some crates, a back exit away from the obvious approach, down from the foreman's office and leading out to the rest of the foundry.

"Please desist your violent attack," a voice said from the top of the stairs on the left. LOKIs, held back as the last line of defense to guard the foreman's office. Garrus heard a shriek of metal and saw two mechs fall down the steps. Shepard looked down at him, and he signaled his intention up to her. _Okay_ , she signaled back, and Garrus continued right and headed up the stair the Blue Suns had tried to hide—Harkin's emergency escape route.

The stair led straight up to the foreman's office. As Garrus turned into a dimly lit work station, he saw Shepard and Goto across the room, coming in at the other door—and Harkin, much closer to Garrus than he was to the two of them, but still focused on Shepard. "You were close," Harkin sneered, "But not close e—"

Garrus knocked Harkin back with the barrel of his pistol, and Harkin's words broke off into a scream. Harkin fell to the ground, and Garrus holstered his gun, seized Harkin bodily, and shoved him hard into the back wall. His talons vibrated with the impact. With his right arm across Harkin's throat, he could feel the rasp of Harkin's breath, smell his fear and the egg salad he'd had for lunch. He stared into Harkin's eyes, centimeters away from his face, and saw the moment when his old coworker finally saw past the scars and realized this had never been about Shepard.

"So, 'Fade'—couldn't make yourself disappear, huh?"

Harkin scrabbled at his right arm. Garrus shoved harder, and he wheezed. "Come on, Garrus. We can work this out. What do you need?"

Garrus let him go. He saw Shepard and Goto, positioned with their weapons raised to provide backup if Harkin tried anything. "I'm looking for someone."

Harkin stood up straight. He rolled his shoulders and neck and smirked. "Well, I guess we both have something the other one wants."

He wanted a better price, but Harkin had miscalculated badly if he thought it was time to negotiate. Garrus had crossed back over to him in a second. A hand to the shoulder kept him from backing off. An armored knee to an unprotected crotch sent Harkin to his knees again, coughing and groaning, eyes streaming now.

"We're not here to ask favors, Harkin," Shepard cut in, voice cold.

Harkin spat, wincing, as he slowly climbed to his feet again. "You don't say."

"You helped a friend of mine disappear," Garrus told him. "I need to find him."

Harkin shook his head. "I might need a little more information than that."

Garrus started pacing. "His name was Sidonis. A turian. Came from th—"

Harkin's eyes fell on the stylized wings on Garrus's armor as he spoke. He backed up two paces as everything suddenly fell into place for him. "I know who he is, and I'm not telling you squat," he declared. His voice shook.

Shepard had come up to stand beside Garrus. She folded her arms. "I'd reconsider that if I were you," she said mildly.

Harkin made a violent, obscene gesture toward her with his left hand. "Screw you! I don't give out client information. It's bad for business."

 _Like you care about business ethics._

Garrus kneed him again, harder this time. He heard the breath as it was expelled from Harkin's lungs in a rush when he hit the wall. "You know what else is bad for business?" he demanded, stepping forward and onto Harkin's throat. "A broken neck!"

The toes of his boots cut into Harkin's face. Garrus shifted his foot, grinding Harkin's face against the concrete wall of the office even as he pressed down on the ass's throat. Harkin wheezed and sputtered. His arms flailed, useless against a body and legs he couldn't reach. Years of laziness and substance abuse had dulled whatever C-Sec training he'd showed up for back in the day. He was an insect, an ugly, creeping thing that crawled in the dark, dragged out into the light and ready to be squashed.

"All right! All right!" Harkin yelled. "Get off me! Aah!"

It wouldn't take much pressure. Push his face to the wall at a different angle, and he'd suffocate in a little under two minutes. Press down on his throat, and he'd die faster than that. Hold him _right_ where he was, and he'd feel like he was dying but stay alive.

A small, strong hand, with too many fingers, closed over his elbow, and Garrus looked back into calm gray eyes. He stepped back and let Harkin stagger to his feet again. Shepard let go of his arm.

Harkin was panting, face bleeding from a couple of small cuts and abrasions. He'd bruise, too, but not too bad. He massaged his throat and spoke hoarsely. "Terminus really changed you, huh, Garrus?"

Garrus shook his head and took another step back to stand next to Shepard. "And you're the same bastard you always were, without the mask." He nodded at a nearby communications terminal. "Arrange a meeting."

Harkin looked past Garrus and Shepard back at Goto. She didn't move. At Shepard. She shrugged, and Garrus gestured at the terminal again. Harkin lifted his hands. "I'm going," he muttered.

Harkin limped over to the terminal. He pressed a few keys to connect a comm implant into the Citadel system.

Harkin wasn't wrong, Garrus thought, turning over his pistol in his hand. Back in C-Sec, he'd argued against it, but he'd listened to restrictions and regulations that meant criminals slipped through the cracks, had the chance to go back to their crimes. He'd held back, arrested the same perps over and over again, seen them go on to hurt more decent people. On Omega, he'd stopped the criminals, one by one, only to see more filth ooze back in to fill the gap. _It always comes back in the end, and no one can go on forever._

Of course, he didn't have to last forever. Only until Omega-4. But until then, he'd do all the good he could. He'd make things right for the others. He'd stand beside Shepard until the end. And he could take out this bastard to make sure all the demons on Omega didn't get any more of a foothold here.

Garrus heard Harkin's side of the conversation with Lantar. He was good—masking all the pain in his voice, handling a definite compromise of Sidonis's identity like a minor breach, something that might just require some new paperwork or a minor relocation, which Harkin would of course handle free of charge.

 _He's a little too smooth. The traitor gets stabbed in the back—there's some justice there. But I wonder who besides C-Sec Harkin's been screwing over?_

Harkin disconnected and walked back over, scrubbing at the drying blood on his face. "It's all good," he reported wearily. "He wants to meet you in front of Orbital Lounge. Middle of the day." He jerked his thumb at the door. "So if our business is done, I'll be going—"

Garrus snagged the front of Harkin's shirt before he could take another step. "I don't think so. You're a criminal now, Harkin."

Harkin shoved at Garrus's chest uselessly. "So, what? You're just going to kill me? That's not your style, Garrus."

 _Not my style._ Garrus didn't know what the hell that was supposed to be anymore.

The job might be over. Bailey was already looking for Harkin. Between the terminals and the volus, C-Sec would have plenty of evidence to convict, all admissible due to Shepard's Spectre status _. Just as long as he doesn't get away._ Garrus's mandibles tightened, and he dropped Harkin's shirt. "Kill you? No." He took aim at Harkin's kneecap. "But I don't mind slowing you down a little."

Then she was there again, both hands around his elbow this time, jerking his forearm up. Garrus's shot cracked off above them and lodged in the cheap office ceiling. "You don't need to do that!" Shepard insisted. Her hands tightened, and Garrus stared down at her. He tensed his arm. She didn't let go. "We know his name, we know his methods," she said quietly. "He won't be able to hide from C-Sec now."

It was true enough, and it was one reason Garrus didn't deck her. The other one was that Harkin wasn't worth a bullet. Garrus ripped his arm free of Shepard and shoved her away, but he holstered his pistol. "I guess it's your lucky day," he told Harkin, nodding at the door.

Harkin sneered. "Yeah. I hope we can do this again real soon."

Garrus glanced at him, then stepped forward and delivered a headbutt to make Urdnot Wrex proud. Harkin's head snapped back and he fell to the floor with a soft groan. Garrus watched his chest rise and fall before turning around. He was out cold. He wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.

He shouldered past Shepard toward the exit. "I didn't shoot him."

Shepard sighed. "With you," she told him. "Let's move, Kasumi."

Goto fell into step behind them. "Can I just say I'm glad you were never on _my_ case?" she observed. "That was . . . intense."

"Sidonis better be outside that lounge, or I'm coming back to finish the job."

* * *

A quick omni-tool search turned up the lounge Sidonis had told Harkin he'd be at. Garrus flew the public skycar to the right entertainment district in Zakera. Shepard and Goto were quiet as he called in a report to Bailey, identifying former officer Ralph Harkin as Fade and giving C-Sec his location as well as an established base of Blue Suns. "Shepard and I took out maybe thirty that were onsite at the time with our associate, but there may be more. Stay sharp."

"Got it. You've done us a real favor, Vakarian. Sounds like Fade was setting up a nasty little operation there. Could have been some real trouble. I'll send a team over. We'll put away Harkin and any of the Suns you might have missed. Bailey out."

Bailey disconnected, and Garrus began lowering the skycar down into the local public transit hub. He shook his head. Harkin would get a few years' jail time at most, after which he'd be released to start the whole thing all over again. "Harkin's a bloody menace. We shouldn't have just let him go. He deserved to be punished."

Shepard looked over at him sharply. "And he will be—but not by you. That's not your job, Garrus. I'm worried about you."

Garrus parked the skycar. He could see the lounge across the street with neon asari dancers out front shifting between two different positions. Sidonis was nowhere in sight yet. _Good_. "How many criminals has he helped escape justice?" Garrus asked Shepard. "How many mercs did he set on us? You don't think he deserved everything he got and more?"

Shepard didn't answer right away. When Garrus looked over, she looked drawn and tired. She folded her legs up underneath her on the car seat and wrapped both arms around them. "Like that guy we saw on _Purgatory_?" she asked. She shook her head. "It's not about what he deserves or not. It's about who you are, who you choose to be."

Garrus hit his hand against the steering wheel. "What do you want from me, Shepard? What would you do if someone betrayed you?"

Again, she took her time answering. "I'm not sure," she said. Her voice was soft enough to float him right back to that street where he'd realized what Sidonis had done. "But I wouldn't let it change me."

Garrus shook his head. "I would have said the same thing before it happened to me."

Shepard let her legs fall again. "So don't," she challenged him. "Don't do this. It's not too late to change your mind."

Garrus reached around for his rifle. "Who's going to bring Sidonis to justice if I don't?" he asked. "Nobody else knows what he's done. Nobody else cares. I don't see any other options."

Shepard hesitated, glanced at Kasumi. "Let me talk to him," she suggested.

Garrus let his hand rise and fall. "Talk all you want, but it won't change my mind. I don't care what his reasons were. He screwed us. He deserves to die."

"He was your friend."

 _That just makes it worse._ Garrus closed his eyes. "I appreciate your concern, but _I'm not you_."

Shepard's retort was immediate. "I'm not asking you to be."

"You're asking me to let him get away with this." Garrus turned the skycar off and turned in his seat to face Shepard. "Why should he go on living when ten good men lie in unmarked graves? I'm sorry, Shepard." He was. He'd do almost anything to wipe that disappointed, distressed look out of her eyes. _Almost_ anything. But not this.

"Words aren't going solve this problem." He caught sight of the chrono on his visor. 1130 local time. "I need to set up." He scanned the street, saw a catwalk off to the left over an intersection. "I can get a clear shot from over there."

Shepard sighed. She lifted her hand and brought it to his shoulder, squeezed. This time he didn't shake her off. "What do you need me to do?"

Garrus felt a rush of gratitude toward her. "Keep him talking, and don't get in my way. I'll let you know when he's in my sights. Give me a signal so I know you're ready, and I'll take the shot." The chrono turned over another minute. If Sidonis got here and saw him sitting in the transit hub, this would all be over. Garrus opened the door and climbed out. "You've got to go. He'll be here soon."

Shepard nodded, climbed out the other side, and headed for the street. Goto fell in line behind Garrus as he edged around it toward the catwalk access.

* * *

 **A/N: Well, that's that. See, if I were Garrus at this juncture, I probably would NOT have sent an obviously conflicted, mostly Paragon Shepard down to talk with the guy I meant to shoot in the head. I mean, Garrus is not an idiot. He's seen what Shepard tends to do when the opportunity comes up to shoot someone who isn't actively shooting back. But, in his defense, he is also** _ **not thinking clearly**_ **right now. That's pretty obvious. I don't think he knew what he wanted to do with Harkin. He's caught between C-Sec's and his father's Officer Vakarian, Omega's Archangel, and the person he's becoming—and nobody knows who that is yet, maybe least of all Garrus himself. Garrus doesn't even think he'll find out. He doesn't want to find out.**

 **If you're still here or just tuned in, reviews are never obligatory, but it's really nice to hear from you. Let me know what's going on in your head, even if it's just "why the #* & don't you update more often?!" or "Do you know how freaking LONG this thing is?"**

 **Best Always,**

 **LMSharp**


	32. Victim's Justice: The Judge

XXXII

Victim's Justice: The Judge

* * *

" _The whole point of every justice system in the galaxy is to see that people get what they deserve from an objective standpoint. If you let it get personal, if you let the victim dispense justice, you're losing everything that makes it justice."_

…

" _Say you're the victim. Say someone kills your family or something, I don't know. Say you know beyond all doubt who did it. Say you've got a chance to kill them clean and walk away. Do you take that shot? Do you call that justice?"_

…

" _I don't know. I don't have all the answers."_

…

" _So you let someone else take the decision for_ you _?"_

…

" _I don't know. Maybe."_

— **Garrus and Weaver, _Mass Effect: Interregnum_ , The Naked Pen**

* * *

"I think you're the only person on the _Normandy_ who can talk to Shepard like that," Kasumi observed quietly. Her omni-tool flickered on and off around her forearm, like she wanted to fade out. "I think you're the only person on the _Normandy_ she wouldn't just order to do what she wanted. This guy, Sidonis—he's the reason your team on Omega died?"

"Yes," Garrus said shortly.

"He sounds like a rat," Kasumi noted. "I'm sorry." She glanced up at Garrus from under her hood as they arrived at the maintenance ladder.

Garrus swung onto the ladder and started to climb. "I should've seen it coming. But he's about to be held accountable for his actions anyway.

"Thanks for being here," he added. "Back there with the Suns—I didn't think finding him would be this much trouble."

Kasumi climbed up behind him. "Don't worry about it, Garrus. Well—maybe a _little_. If we could keep the all-out war with the toughest mercs in the Terminus to a minimum, I'd appreciate it. I have to live out here, you know."

Garrus glanced back at Kasumi. _Has she processed the fact that we_ don't _?_ he wondered. _Is she in denial, or does she not realize that once we're through the relay, we probably aren't coming back?_

For all she was a thief, he liked Goto. _Probably the nicest criminal I've ever met, and she's been a good friend—to me and to Shepard. But no matter what she feels like she owes Shepard, no one should be on a mission like this just because they feel like they have to. When that happens—you get Sidonis._

 _He could have left another way. He could have told me. Turning all of us over—that's on him._

Every centimeter of Garrus buzzed with energy, focus. He was ready for the relay—to go out taking the bastards doing the Reapers' work out with him. Then maybe someday, if they balanced the people he'd protected—the good he'd done against the people he'd lost and the mistakes he'd made, they'd find everything he'd done hadn't been a complete waste. But to move on, he had to put the others down to rest. To feel like he could put them down, he had to put Sidonis down first.

Garrus extended his rifle and set up at the catwalk railing. "Watch the walkway for me, will you?" he asked Goto. "Maintenance shifts are usually during the night cycle. We shouldn't be interrupted by anyone but the Keepers, and they won't care what we're doing, but let's keep a lookout anyway."

"You got it, big guy."

From this vantage point, Garrus could see the entire plaza below. He had a shot to almost any position down there. The difficulty would be avoiding collateral damage. Too many people had a lunch hour around this time. It'd be Shepard's job to get Sidonis away from the crowds where Garrus could get a clear shot.

She wasn't hard to spot—in this sector, heavy arms and armor stood out like a beacon. From the catwalk, Garrus could see the crowds edging around her, giving her just a little bit more space than they gave anyone else. He opened up the radio connection. "Shepard, can you hear me?"

Shepard's voice came through his radio, strong and confident. "Loud and clear."

She sauntered over to a bench and sat down to wait, nice and conspicuous. She wouldn't be waiting long. Harkin had told Sidonis his identity was compromised, and if there was one thing Garrus still trusted Lantar to do, it was to look after his own interests.

He pictured how it would play out in his head. A signal, a single shot. It would take him less than five seconds to close up the Mantis and get down off the catwalk. Everyone would see Shepard hadn't taken the shot. No C-Sec agent would take a Spectre in for questioning on who had, even guessing she'd helped the sniper. Still—probably better to take the alleys around to another transit station before heading back to the _Normandy_ with Goto. Three blocks at least, but not more than six, because by that time C-Sec would have agents in the area looking for a sniper. Call Shepard and meet her at the docks to catch the shuttle.

No one on this street would see him, but it was possible—if unlikely—that he'd be picked up on suspicion before he got to a transit station. If that happened—well. _If Shepard doesn't step in, I'll take whatever they give me. Like Sidonis should have done._

Muting the radio, he spoke to Goto, on his flank about a meter and a half away. "After the shot, you can get to Shepard or come with me, but either way, you're going to have to move fast. Understand?"

Her laugh sounded behind him. "Oh, I know how to avoid C-Sec, Garrus. It's sweet of you to think of me, though."

Garrus held up a hand. Through the scope, he'd seen a turian with a blue-striped mandible walk onto the street. He steadied his gun on the railing, focused his visor. Short, broad nose; narrow, sculpted browplates and chin. He looked more tired and worn than Garrus would've imagined—out of shape and unarmed in a red and blue suit, but the text over his face confirmed the ID.

 **LANTAR SIDONIS, TURIAN**

 **-Search?**

 **-Construct targeting solution?**

Garrus fell into a breathing pattern to stabilize his shot and selected the second option. But Sidonis was in the middle of a crowd now—there was at least one civilian in the way on any approach vector. Garrus opened the radio connection again. "Red-and-blue, at 0245. Wave him over and keep him talking."

Shepard straightened on the bench. She stood, and Sidonis caught sight of her. He tensed. His mandibles tightened, and he looked over his shoulder and to either side— _but not up. After all we did together, he still doesn't look up._

Sidonis strode quickly over to the bench, and Shepard's radio picked up his voice, low, nervous. "Let's get this over with."

 _Yes. Let's do that._ Garrus had to force himself to breathe, looking down at Sidonis's unblemished face, that suit that couldn't have been cheap. _You bought that with the lives of our friends, didn't you?_ Suddenly, he couldn't wait for Shepard to be ready. She'd already pulled Sidonis away from the civilians. Now the only person standing in between Sidonis and the bullet he'd had coming for months was on the other end of Garrus's radio.

"You're in my shot," Garrus told her. "Move to the side."

Then, at thirty times' magnification, he saw Shepard's shoulders tense and the back of her head lift in his crosshairs, and a wave of incredulous rage swept over him before she opened her mouth to say a word.

"Listen, Sidonis. Stand still."

 _She's not. She_ wouldn't _._

 _Of course she would._

Sidonis was leaning forward. "Don't ever say that name aloud," he hissed.

Shepard's hand made a negative gesture in front of her. She didn't move her head a centimeter. "Too late for that now. Garrus is here, and he wants you dead."

Just past Shepard, Garrus could see the bastard tense all over. "Garrus? Is this some kind of joke?"

He'd run. He'd dive into the crowd and into a store the first chance he got, and there would never be a chance like this again. He was fast. Garrus had plenty of experience with just how fast.

 _I'm faster._

"Damn it, Shepard! If he moves, I'm taking the shot!"

Sidonis was staring into Shepard's face. "You're not kidding, are you?" he realized. His voice shook. "Screw this. I'm not sticking around here to find out. Tell Garrus I had my own problems."

Sidonis turned his back, Garrus's finger tensed on the trigger—and Shepard lunged forward and _grabbed_ Sidonis, holding him in place behind her head. "Don't move!"

Sidonis fought her. "Get off me!"

"I am the only thing standing between you and a hole in the head. Do. Not. Move."

Shepard's voice was taut and terse, but Garrus didn't see any sign she'd give. She'd made her choice, and she'd stick to it, damn the consequences. It was something they'd always had in common. He could feel the bullet burning its way into Sidonis's brain—but the only path it could take went straight through Shepard's head.

Sidonis looked around wildly, spotted the catwalk. Garrus doubted Sidonis could see him—he was thirty-three meters away in the shadows. But Sidonis knew where he would be. "Fuck!" His hands twisted together, rubbed behind his fringe. "Look . . . I didn't want to do it. I didn't have a choice."

"Everyone has a choice," Garrus spat _. You can do the right thing or you can do the wrong thing. I'd hoped I taught you that._ Looking down the barrel, though, past Shepard, Garrus saw the same idiot merc who'd rescued him from a krogan just for what he could get. The guy who'd given him excuses from day one. _You said you wanted to change. Turns out, you just wanted to think that. I wanted to believe you. And you got ten better men killed._

Sidonis scrabbled at Shepard's wrists. Her arms seized, like she wanted to throw him away. _Do it! Just let me kill him!_ But she stayed put. "They got to me. Said they'd kill me if I didn't help. What was I supposed to do?"

"Let me take the shot, Shepard!" Garrus exploded. "He's a damn coward!"

Anger surged through him like a back-alley stim; a dozen plans that wouldn't work floated through his head.

 _If she won't move, I can make her. She has medi-gel and backup here and a doctor in orbit. A shot to the leg won't kill her. I can follow up in time._

The muzzle of his gun dropped just a few degrees. His visor automatically tracked the new firing trajectory. His finger tightened on the trigger. Loosened.

 _Damn it, it's_ Shepard _._

He raised his gun again. _Just_ move _._

She was snarling at Sidonis. "That's it? You were just trying to save your own skin?"

Words, words, and more words. They were useless. She knew what Sidonis was, he could tell, but she was still trying to find another way, when he'd told her there wasn't one. _She has to realize._ _All she has to do is take a step. One step._ Shepard _._

"I know what I did," Sidonis said. His hands fell away from Shepard back to his sides. "I know they died because of me. And I have to live with that." He turned away, and _he_ took a step—but Shepard stepped with him, keeping her head squarely in Garrus's crosshairs. Sidonis's voice was fainter now, turned away from Shepard and the radio, but Garrus could still hear him. "I wake up every night . . . sick . . . and sweating. Each of their faces staring at me . . . accusing me. I'm already a dead man. I don't sleep. Food has no taste. Some days I just _want_ it to be over."

His shoulders were slumped, resigned. His voice was gray. Regret and guilt colored his every word. Garrus's eyes stung, and his stomach turned.

 _I didn't want to see this._

 _All the regret in the galaxy doesn't do them any good now._

He swallowed. "Just give me the chance," he whispered to Shepard.

Shepard turned—just slightly. Not enough the shot cleared, but enough he could see her profile. "He's already paying for his crime, Garrus," she said. The tension had gone from her voice. She sounded grim, but he caught a note of satisfaction there too. "He'll pay for the rest of his life."

 _It's worse,_ she meant. That for Sidonis, wallowing in his cowardice and his guilt for however long he had to live would punish him more than any bullet.

 _So he walks away when they didn't?_ "He hasn't paid enough! He still has his life."

Shepard threw her hand out at Lantar. "Look at him, Garrus. This is a man that sold his soul to save his skin. Now he has to pay the devil. Leave him to it." Garrus saw Sidonis close his eyes, mandibles fluttering. "He's already in Hell," Shepard concluded. "There's nothing for you to kill."

Garrus's vision blurred. If she stepped aside, could he even make the shot now? _An eye for an eye, a life for a life. That's what the humans say. But if you put them all on the scale, one life isn't ten, no matter what you do to the numbers. Was Sidonis's life worth even one of theirs, even then?_

 _. . ._

 _I thought so. I hoped so. But it definitely isn't now._

There wasn't any comfort in seeing who Sidonis really was. Who he'd always been, and what he'd done to himself that day on Omega. _He's not bad. He's just weak. He always was. And that just makes it worse._ "My men . . . they deserved better."

Sidonis looked up at the catwalk. "Tell Garrus—" he sighed and dropped his head again. "I guess there's nothing I can say to make it right."

Garrus lowered his rifle. "Just . . . go," he told Sidonis. Then he remembered Sidonis couldn't hear him. "Tell him to go."

Shepard jerked her head at the way Sidonis had come. "Get out of here, you bastard. He's letting you live. Do something with it."

 _There's nothing he can do._

 _But I've been wrong before._

Sidonis bobbed his head, backing away. "I . . . I'll try." He looked up at the catwalk. "Garrus—I'll make it up to you somehow." He looked back at Shepard. "Thank you—for talking to him."

Shepard shook her head and looked straight up at Garrus. She couldn't see him, either, but he saw her, peering through the shadows right to his position. "I didn't do it for you," she said—but she wasn't talking to Sidonis anymore.

But spirits, he'd've taken another rocket over seeing Sidonis walk away. Over _knowing_ that bullet he'd planned to shoot couldn't make things right any more than Sidonis could. Garrus stood up and turned around to climb down the ladder so he wouldn't have to watch it anymore.

Goto's voice sounded behind him, unusually subdued. "Garrus. You did the right thing."

Garrus shook his head. "I don't know what the hell that is."

Shepard was already at the transit station when he and Goto got back, leaning against the driver's side, looking for him. Those gray eyes met his, and her mouth opened. Garrus held up a hand. "I know you want to talk about this, but I don't. Not yet."

 _Maybe not ever._

Shepard held his gaze for a moment, then simply nodded. "Let's go then."

Garrus looked out toward the sky. There was only the relay now. Only the Collectors. _But I don't deserve anything different._ He palmed the public skycar open. "Right with you."

Forgiveness was more complicated than a lot of people thought. Justice meant extracting the price of a debt from whomever or whatever that had incurred it. Mercy meant you didn't—but someone still had to pay the debt. So forgiveness meant absorbing that price yourself. In credits, in guilt, in grief, in blood. _And if you can't afford it, well, that's just too bad._

Garrus took off his visor. He ran his finger over each name engraved into the rim. Whatever had just happened, it wasn't forgiveness. He couldn't carry the weight of every life there with the most powerful mass effect field devised. _But neither can Sidonis._

He closed his eyes. He heard Shepard's armor rising and falling with every breath she took beside him, each little movement she made as she steered them back toward the docks, and he could see how she'd looked, standing in his scope, pushing everything that had happened on Omega back at him up the barrel of his Mantis.

 _Stop._

 _Look._

 _Listen._

It would have been easier to see her laid out on the street next to Sidonis and walk away.

 _But nothing's ever easy._

 _No one else in the galaxy could've talked me out of shooting Sidonis back there, Shepard._

 _I would've shot anyone else that tried._

That was a different kind of disturbing, but he would process that later.

He could feel she was still looking at him, glances stolen away from watching the skies. Without saying a word, she had the gravity of a star. _What was it about, Shepard? If it wasn't about saving him, why?_

But he thought he knew.

Two years or a lifetime ago, he'd kept someone else from killing a man that deserved it—a gunrunner, a gangster, and a murderer. Justice—real justice—had to be objective. That's what he'd said, and he'd believed it. In C-Sec and on Omega, he'd always fought for the victims, and he'd never let the victims make the calls.

Today, Shepard had done the same. She'd taken the call away from him and forced him back inside lines that once upon a time he'd agreed with. The only difference was that Shepard hadn't bothered to shoot the guy that deserved it for him.

 _Would you like it better if she had?_

He didn't like the conclusion he came to.

Shepard touched down at the docks. She shut off the public use skycar without a word and opened the doors for him and for Goto. Across the transit station, Niels was already hovering, ready to take them back to the _Normandy_.

 _Just the relay now_.

But now, he didn't feel so ready.

* * *

 **A/N: Even with inconsistent posting dates nowadays, I like to get at least two chapters a month up. So you get two in immediate succession this week, because I'm running out of time, and I had this done already. It's combat scenes that take me forever.**

 **I've mentioned before that I take large portions of The Naked Pen's** _ **Interregnum**_ **as headcanon for** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **. NP's Garrus is not quite my Garrus—my Garrus is younger, for one thing, and has a noticeably different voice, because I write him, though I hope he still sounds like Garrus. But the foreshadowing in the "Eye for an Eye" arc of NP's fic was too good not to explicitly reference here, so credit to The Naked Pen for the experience they wrote for Garrus and Weaver there that I made use of here. To those of you who haven't read the fic—drop everything you're doing and go do that now. It's a long read but worth it. One of my favorite stories, period, fanfic or published. I've recommended it to people completely unfamiliar with the Mass Effect franchise.**

 **While this chapter marks the halfway point of** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **(YAY!), it is the climax of Garrus's personal arc, though there are a few chapters more of denouement as he processes everything that just happens and what he thinks about it. After this chapter, the focus of the story shifts to the wider fight against the Collectors and the Reapers (and furtively, against Cerberus) and the changing nature of the relationship between Shepard and Garrus.**

 **Leave a review if you've got anything to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	33. The Rivers of Hell: Phlegethon

**A/N: In Greek mythology, the Phlegethon was one of the five rivers of the Underworld. It was a river of fire that flowed into the depths of Tartarus, the deepest of all the hells. In Dante's** _ **Inferno**_ **, the Phlegethon is associated with rage and violence and bloodshed, and in the seventh circle of hell, murderers, tyrants, and those who have made war are immersed in the river of boiling blood forever.**

* * *

XXXIII

The Rivers of Hell: Phlegethon

Two hours after the _Normandy_ left the Citadel, Garrus got a page on his omni-tool.

 **See me at your earliest convenience.**

— **Miranda**

Garrus dismissed the message and set his sniper down on the workbench. He gripped the side of the workbench. "Text reply," he told his visor then. "'You know where I am.'" He looked over the text on his visor, sent it, and picked up his cleaning rod again.

Sending a reply like that could get him booted down from Hammerhead maintenance and shuttle bay cleanup to dishes, plumbing, and swab details for a week, but he wasn't going to cater to Lawson's chain-of-command crap today. _If she doesn't like it, tough._

But if he'd thought it would get him out of the lecture, Lawson proved him wrong right away. She was in the battery in five minutes.

"You know why I'm here," she said without preamble.

Garrus didn't bother to stand or offer her a seat. "Was it Goto or the AI?" He ran another patch through the barrel, examining it closely.

"Jacob can do that," Lawson said, irritated. "Running and maintaining the armory is part of his job."

Garrus switched out the patches for a brush and solvent. "And you're at the armory fifteen minutes early inspecting your own weapons before every mission. I clean my own guns. Goto or the AI?"

Lawson's hands were on her hips. "Both, naturally. For a thief, Kasumi likes her gossip. Of course, she didn't tell me what had happened directly." She pursed her lips. "The crew are nearly as protective of you as they are of Shepard. I had almost come to agree with them. But ever since Gabby told her off a few weeks ago, Kasumi hasn't run her scramblers in engineering. We heard what happened down there."

She stopped. "Garrus." Garrus looked up at her finally.

"I'm not afraid to recommend Shepard remove you from the ground team," Lawson told him. "If I see or hear of anything like what happened down there happening again, I will."

Garrus started wiping down his action. "Shepard stopping someone from taking down some guy who deserves it? In case you hadn't noticed, she does that at least once a week."

"She doesn't stand in one of her squad's crosshairs for minutes on end to do it once a week," Miranda retorted. "You had that gun on her for _minutes_. If I'd been there, I'd have shot you."

Garrus reached over to place the action on the workbench with the rest of the parts of the Mantis. His hands shook. "I wasn't about to shoot Shepard." _She knew that. She used that._

Miranda's ice-blue eyes raked over him. "Weren't you?" she demanded.

Garrus remembered that poisonous thought, fiery and insiduous. _A shot to the leg won't kill her._ He swallowed. His mandibles tightened and without his permission, his fists clenched at his sides. "I wasn't."

 _Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap._ Lawson's boot against the floor was the only sound above the humming of the Thanix. "Whether or not I believe you, I'm not sure that's our primary problem here," Lawson said at last. "The point is that Shepard stepped there in the first place."

"She'd do the same for you. For any of us."

"No one else would ever put her in that position," Miranda snapped. She took a breath. _Tap. Tap._ "We're expendable, all of us. Every one of us but her. Our job is to protect Commander Shepard. If you're determined to be stupid enough she feels she literally has to take a bullet for you, we'll find another gunnery officer and lieutenant."

Garrus scoffed. "It's generally a bad idea to make threats you can't carry out. It just makes you look like an idiot who's lost control. You're too experienced not to know that."

He had her, and she knew it. At this point, the relay team was set. Shepard was running her last drills, making sure everyone knew how to work together and everyone was ready for the mission, but Garrus guessed they'd hit the Omega-4 relay in three weeks, if it took that long. There were maybe a dozen engineers in the galaxy who knew how to calibrate a Thanix cannon. The tech was too new, only implemented on perhaps four Hierarchy ships so far. Recruiting someone else to work the gun—work it on a Cerberus ship—would be a long shot to begin with. Recruiting someone else that could work the gun and serve as a lieutenant in Shepard's ground team, working with her and everyone else, this late in the game? It would be next to impossible. Cerberus could hire two guys to do Garrus's job, but that got into a question of resource allocation, and timing would still be a bitch. At this point, Miranda and Cerberus were stuck with him, whether they liked it or not.

Miranda glared at him for a long moment. "As if I ever had any control here," she spat finally. Her voice was bitter. "Less than ever since you showed up."

"That's not my fault."

Miranda slashed her hand through the air, dismissing it. "Forget it. Just tell me: are you compromised?"

At first, Garrus didn't answer. "Not anymore," he said. Saying it was almost as difficult as lowering his rifle had been in the first place. He just felt tired now. Tired and empty—but somehow free.

Miranda's next question surprised him. "Is Shepard?"

Garrus looked up again. Miranda's gaze was serious, searching. Suddenly, he got it. _She actually thinks if it was me or the mission that Shepard might hesitate._

Garrus stood and walked over to the gunnery console. He didn't know if he should be offended on Shepard's behalf or amused at the idea, considered both, and decided he didn't have time or space for either right now. He had even less time for the small, far-off, ego-driven part of himself that wanted to believe Lawson, was in fact flattered to do so—especially now.

 _But I know Shepard, and after months on her crew and spirits knows how many times reading her file, Lawson should know better too._

He told her as much. "You know, on Virmire, Shepard left Ashley Williams and a bunch of salarians to die because if the geth killed Kaidan and managed to override the bomb he was arming, our mission would fail."

"I've read the reports," Lawson told him. "And, as a professional, you don't think that, in a similar situation, Commander Shepard would be more hesitant to sacrifice you than she was to sacrifice Chief Williams on Virmire?"

Garrus shifted. He wanted to bring the calibration controls up, but he at least had it together enough to know that anything he tried to do right now would be crap. He stared down at the console.

 _Surgery without anaesthesia. Fighting in a krogan hospital. Getting reamed out by Pallin. Dinner with Dad._ Garrus could think of a hundred nasty places he would rather be and a hundred unpleasant things he would rather be doing than professionally evaluating Shepard's detachment from him to Miranda Lawson. He didn't want to think about Shepard at all right now.

Finally, he shook his head. "I think she'd feel it more," he said. "Maybe a lot more. If there was any way she could save me, she would. She would've saved Williams and those salarians if she could. But if it came down to it, she'd do the right thing. I hope that answers your question."

Behind him, Lawson didn't reply. Garrus shifted again, then turned to face her. She'd tilted her head, listening to some sort of report over her radio. She straightened then and looked at him again. "EDI's picked up a report that was just filed in the C-Sec database," she said. "It seems a turian named Lantar Sidonis just turned himself in as a conspirator and accessory to ten counts of murder on Omega. They couldn't charge him for a crime committed outside of Citadel jurisdiction. Captain Bailey booked him for illegal immigration and fraudulent documents."

Garrus couldn't help laughing. The sound came out strangled and broken. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, bracing himself over the console. It was a moment before he could speak. "Can you go? Please?"

He felt Miranda still standing there, watching him for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was unreadable. "I'll see you aren't disturbed." Her heels clicked away, and the door hissed open and shut behind her.

Hours later, when Garrus checked the duty roster, half expecting a punishment there, instead of an assignment, he saw another note by his name. **Duty optional, 1d18h14m, by order of Executive Officer M. Lawson.**

* * *

The next morning, Garrus took a shower, changed undersuits, and reported to Doctor Chakwas for his semiweekly bandage change. He didn't actually need one anymore. The risk of infection was over, and there was a limit to how much more topical treatments on the scarring every day could improve the feeling on the right side of his face. He'd already got almost all of the range of motion back, and with such a severe burn, that was about as much as he could have hoped for, maybe more. It still looked raw enough that he preferred the bandage.

He left the med bay to grab breakfast from Gardner, but he stopped when he saw Shepard in the hallway outside the battery. Her hand stopped on its way to the access panel, dropped. She leaned back on her back leg, pivoted, and saw him watching her from the other end of the hallway. His visor picked up her flush.

He took the three steps up into the hallway and walked down to her. "Looking for me?"

She opened her mouth, shut it again. Then she sighed. "Want some breakfast?"

Without a word, Garrus gestured for her to proceed him back down the hall. "Garrus!" Gardner greeted him, standing over the range with a smile. "Saw you coming. I've already got some of yours in the pan. Have it out in a couple of minutes. What'll it be for you, Commander?"

"I'll just fix myself a bagel, Sergeant, thanks," Shepard said, slipping behind the counter and reaching up into the pantry. She pulled out the bag of bagels Gardner had defrosted yesterday, but before she got a plate or started fixing her meal, she pulled down the ariita beans from the top shelf and poured some into the left side of the coffee maker.

Gardner saw her doing it. "Shoot, I always forget. One of you is always doing it for me. Sorry, Garrus."

"Don't worry about it, Sergeant," Garrus said, as Shepard turned and began looking over the fixings Gardner had out for the crew's omelettes. "There's a lot of early risers on the _Normandy_. Pretty sure the coffee and the ariita pot are usually going before you open up shop, aren't they?"

"Still," Gardner insisted, "Feel like I'm slacking off. _You_ shouldn't have to make sure the man gets his turian coffee in the morning, Shepard."

"If I'm here making sure _I_ get coffee in the morning it takes all of one minute longer," Shepard replied, pouring herself a mug from the pot already full on the right as she spoke. She closed her bagel and picked up her plate right as Gardner plated Garrus's breakfast and handed it to him.

"Well, let me pour some for you anyway, Garrus, and tell me how your breakfast is, won't you? I really think I am getting better. As good as any human dextro cook with an allergy can be, anyway." He filled a second mug for Garrus, and Garrus nodded thanks and followed Shepard over to a table.

"Is he really getting better?" Shepard asked.

"Well. I've stopped feeling nauseated after meals." Garrus took a bite and considered. "Gardner seems to have graduated from 'absolutely revolting' to 'tasteless' or 'overdone.' So I guess you could say he _is_ getting better."

"If it's just tasteless or overdone, we should get you some sauce or something. Drown your food and you'll be eating like most of us on a bad week."

Garrus managed a laugh. "Three cheers for the military."

Shepard swallowed some of her coffee. "So. Optional duty."

Garrus hummed. "Guessing it's no longer optional?"

Shepard shook her head. "It's optional." She paused. She wouldn't meet his eyes. "I work you hard, Garrus. I know that. Harder than anyone. And after yesterday—"

Garrus put down his fork. "I'd just as soon be back at work, honestly," he interrupted. "Stay busy."

"If you ever need some time—"

Garrus cut her off again. "I'll request it. What have you got?"

"Previous contract of Massani's, actually," Shepard told him. "Contingent of Blue Suns have seized an Eldfall-Ashland fuel refinery on Zorya. Eldfall-Ashland wants the Suns out and the refinery back, and they wouldn't complain if the workers being held hostage there and worked like slaves were liberated either. Liability issues." Shepard's voice was sardonic, but her face was soft. "If you're not up to it yet, you don't have to come. I can ask Krios or Samara, and it won't make a whole lot of difference. But I figured you might want to be there."

"Who's in the team?" Garrus asked.

"It's Zaeed's mission, so he's coming. I want Taylor and Jack along too."

Massani and Taylor and Jack. Garrus or Krios or Samara. Shepard was weighting the team toward experience today. _And apparently expecting heavy resistance._

Garrus tapped his talons on the table. He acknowledged that part of him wanted to leave her to it. _Just this once, she can do without me_. He'd done everything but beg Shepard, more than once, to just do what he needed her to do. Not even that. Just to let _him_ do what he needed to do, and in the end, she'd done the same thing she always did.

 _Well. At least she's consistent. And there's nothing like shooting a couple dozen bad guys to work off some frustration._

The Suns were illegally occupying a refinery, stealing resources, terrorizing several innocent civilians to do their work for them. Massani's mission sounded straightforward and uncomplicated, no messy moral quandaries or philosophical soul-searching required. Just like old times taking out gangs in the Traverse or freeing hostages for Hackett and the Alliance. But just like then, it had the potential to get ugly if they didn't handle it right. Did he really want her going in without him?

 _No_ , he decided. Not yet. _Probably not ever_. "I'm in, Shepard." he said finally.

Shepard searched his face. There was a tension to her this morning that he hadn't noticed before. There was a cool formality to the small talk, the way she'd requested him to join the ground team instead of just ordering it, that he hadn't seen from her since very early days on the _SR-1_ , but the uncertainty he'd seen by the battery door was something else. Finally, she nodded. She stood. "We'll be in orbit in four hours. I guess we'll see you in the shuttle bay then.

"You will," Garrus promised. Shepard left, carrying her tray. Her breakfast was only half finished.

 _She doesn't know if we're okay,_ he realized.

 _Well, neither do I._

Garrus drank some ariita and started thinking about what guns he should bring down to Zorya.

* * *

The moisture in the air on Zorya hit before the heat; the humidity was thick enough that it had a taste. Garrus stepped out of the shuttle, and the moss underfoot squelched. The mud beneath sucked at his boots, and everywhere, as far as he could see, was green. Vines stretched from tree to towering tree. The light of Zorya's star, Faia, filtered down through the leaves overhead, and from the ferns and shrubs of the undergrowth that competed to receive it, Garrus heard the incessant, thrumming buzz of large insects.

Jack's face was the picture of disgust. She raised a hand and wiped her fingers across the front of her leather shirt—a Citadel acquisition that didn't protect her any more than the _Purgatory_ harness had but at least covered a few more of the dizzying tattoos. Her fingers came away already damp with condensation. "Fuck!" she complained.

"It's a shithole," Massani agreed. "See Chakwas for the allergy shot? If you have any sort of allergies, this planet's a goddamn death trap."

Jack laughed. "Good thing Twitchy's not here then. One whiff, and the plants here would kill her dead."

"Actually, Tali'd probably be safer than we will without helmets," Shepard corrected her. "Her suit has some of the best antitoxin filters in the galaxy. They've probably burned away most of the harmful flora near the refinery, but if your eyes start watering or you start wanting to sneeze, put on a helmet. We're trying to be sneaky here."

Taylor rolled his eyes. "Cerberus's antihistimines should hold a full day after we're done here, boss, but we'll keep that in mind."

Garrus actually found Zorya a nice change of pace. The jungle world wasn't anything like the galactic hubs, nuclear wastes, and junkyard planets they'd visited recently. The tropical climate was definitely more to his taste than some of the frozen rocks Shepard had dragged him to—more alive than anywhere he'd been in a while.

But Massani was done with the travel notes. His omni-tool was up, and he was already in a ready stance. "Tapping into Blue Suns communications," he said. "Stay tight and watch for ambushes."

A new hiss sounded over the radio. "Squad Bravo," a man was saying. "A shuttle landed near your location. Check it out."

Garrus pulled out his sniper rifle.

"Go ahead and take point, Zaeed," Shepard said.

Massani nodded, terse. "Here we go. Keep close."

By this time, Garrus had a good idea of how to work in any grouping of Shepard's ground team. Taylor and Massani would lead any assault here. With the two of them up front, Jack would fall back. She wouldn't have as much fun, but she would actually do more damage, focusing her efforts mostly on biotic support. Garrus would be in the rear and at the edges of the line with Shepard, sniping at range; flanking, when they could. This particular team was probably one of the most classically military that Shepard could have fielded, tailored to take on a large number of well-trained Blue Suns soldiers in an entrenched position when there might be several complications.

A Bravo Squad meant there was also an Alpha Squad, which mean they were looking at at least sixteen Suns here. In fact, this contingent was probably closer to platoon-strength, since they had the civilian workers of the refinery under control. The five of them would have to root out the Suns, avoid firing on any civilians, and resolve any hostage situations that came up—all while avoiding damage to the refinery, if Massani was to succeed in his mission. Then the path twisted, and they saw a jumpsuited corpse lying on the ground.

Garrus stopped at the body. He was human. Garrus guessed he was middle-aged. He'd died from a gunshot to the spine, but the ripe smell rising from the corpse and the ants and flies already crawling over it made it hard to tell more than that. He'd obviously been dead at least a few hours. "Think it's just this one, or have they killed more of the workers?" Taylor asked.

"We won't find out from here," Garrus answered.

Massani grunted. "Shot in the back and left to rot. That's definitely Vido's style. Let's push ahead."

Garrus glanced at Massani. "Vido?"

"Vido Santiago," Massani told him. "He's the guy in charge."

The name was familiar to Garrus, and he frowned, turning to Shepard. "I know him," he said. "Ran across the name back on Omega, doing recon on the Blue Suns. Shepard, this isn't some random cell. Vido Santiago runs the whole organization."

Shepard's eyes narrowed, and she turned to Massani, but just then, the insects stopped chirping in the underbrush. Around the next bend of the path, Garrus heard the wet thud of other boots on the soft ground, the rattle of ceramic plate.

Jacob and Jack lit up blue with biotic barriers. All five of them fanned out, Shepard activated her tactical cloak, and Garrus moved back into the shadows of the trees beside the path. As they rounded the corner, they saw Bravo Squad, eight humans, turians, and batarians stationed around temporary-looking concrete barricades that had obviously been trucked out here and set up to impede progress toward the refinery.

Two of them saw Massani, Taylor, and Jack. "Intruders spotted!" one yelled, opening fire.

Jack's barrier shoved the shot to the side. She hit the ground, and a shockwave went up, pulsing out from where she stood like a freight train. Six of the eight men were thrown off their feet with the force of it. Massani opened fire before they could rise again, his Vindicator echoing through the trees. A turian's shields blinked out, only for his face to be blown away in a hailfire of bullets. Shepard's Widow cracked out from the east, and a batarian went down in a heap.

Vido Santiago's voice cut through on the radio. "Command to Bravo: Take the position! Likely these people are not runaways."

Garrus aimed and fired twice from his position in the trees, making the headshot each time. Taylor floated the third for him—Garrus's third shot hit the human's head at the same time as Taylor's shotgun blast punched right through the armor on his abdomen, leaving a messy, gaping wound.

Bravo Squad was eradicated in another three seconds. They'd been on patrol, unprepared and mostly in the open, but Garrus didn't expect they'd take out the next ones so easily. Shepard gestured the four of them on, and they continued down the path.

The trees opened up ahead, and Garrus saw the first signs that the refinery was close. Over the path, a more permanent scaffolding had been set up—rusted, so it had obviously existed before the Suns had arrived. Here, outgoing shuttles would have been able to pick up cargo and inbound ones would have dropped off supplies. Trucks would have carried the cargo both ways to and from the more secure refinery up a more established road.

As they approached, the radio crackled. "Report to base: Armed intruders incoming at the southern checkpoint!"

"Heads up," Massani called, gesturing with his gun toward a catwalk over the checkpoint, where the Blue Suns were setting up a crossfire.

Garrus adjusted his path to line up shots toward the catwalk, as more troops streamed out on the ground level toward them from the north. "I'm on it."

There was cover on the right, a column of metal and cement that would serve as a landmark for incoming shuttles. Garrus took up a post behind it, bludgeoning a man down and out of his way as he went. The butt of his rifle to the head put him down; a hard stomp on his throat took him out and saved the ammo. Garrus felt the guy's windpipe crunch under his boot before the guy had a chance to bring his combat knife around.

Immediately in front of him, Jack and Jacob were tag-teaming their biotics to tear the guys on the ground apart, while Massani was watching the advance position.

"Reinforcements incoming," some Blue Sun said over the radio. "We've got your backs!"

The shots to the top of the catwalk were easy ones, even from the low ground. Garrus took out both snipers in four seconds. Shepard knocked the turian climbing up the stairs to strengthen the position right off the steps and over the railing with her Widow, and sent an incendiary after him—just in case she hadn't killed him already.

It was easy. It was play. When the reinforcements for the checkpoint started coming in, they'd already sewn the road up into a bottleneck—a foolproof kill zone. _Stupid_ , Garrus thought dispassionately. _They had the entire jungle to set up scouts and snipers in, and they picked the obvious positions._ Either they'd been reckless enough to think no one would really show up to take the refinery back, or Vido Santiago was old and powerful enough he'd forgotten what it was like to be vulnerable. _Well. We can teach him that._

His men weren't quite so stupid. After about six of the reinforcements had gone down, someone called the retreat. "All squads, fall back!"

Santiago countermanded the order right away. "This is Commander Santiago. If any of you retreat while the intruders are still alive, I'll kill you myself. Now get the hell back out there!"

But there were maybe four of them left outside the refinery itself. Garrus saw them. By now, he'd taken the catwalk position for himself. He saw them, coming down the road, stalking toward the entrance to the checkpoint. Two actually did try to leave the road and head for the trees. "Watch the treeline," he warned.

"They want to play games?" Jack snarled. "Cute." She used her biotics to rip one out of the trees. Taylor fired his shotgun, and Jack's target went limp, dead weight until the field that held him suspended collapsed. Massani mowed down the other, and Garrus and Shepard took out the last two.

The bottleneck into the road to the refinery was choked with corpses by now—ten of them. Red and blue blood ran together into the dirt, and the metallic smell cut over the scent of the trees and plants. Massani pushed the bodies aside with his boot, and Garrus and the others followed him through the checkpoint.

The road broke off ahead, cut in two by a river that ran through a deep, rocky ravine. The refinery wall was on the other side, rising up on the other side of the bank. The access panel on the door glowed an angry red—locked down, but they could fix that. The more immediate problem was the bridge across the ravine. It had been retracted. Fortunately, there was an access panel on this side of the road. Normally, the bridge would probably be extended with an employee access card; they'd have to hack the terminal.

Shepard walked up to it, taking her time. To her left, mist rose up from the waterfall that thundered down into the ravine from hills to the west. Garrus noted the humidity on Zorya had done a number on the product she usually used to keep her hair gelled down. Tiny curls were forming a fascinating nimbus all around her head. _Only humans_ , he thought, amused. The corner of Jack's mouth was twitching as she looked at Shepard too. _I wonder if that's why she keeps her head shaved_.

But Shepard didn't seem bothered by the way her human hair was taking on a life of its own. She was only half paying attention to the access console, watching Massani, who was staring at the refinery, a tic in his jaw.

"Vido," he growled, almost to himself. "Sounds like he hasn't changed."

"Leader of the Blue Suns," Shepard observed. "I'm not too impressed so far. You know more about this guy than you said, though, Zaeed. You've got a past."

Massani gripped the rail that ran along the side of the ravine. "I knew he was a sadistic bastard back when we started the Blue Suns. The Suns only got meaner after he staged his little coup twenty years ago. So, yeah. We have a past."

Garrus stared at the merc. He'd guessed Massani was bad news from the beginning, known he'd had a past with the Suns, but he had never suspected this. " _You're_ the founder of the Blue Suns?!"

Massani flashed his teeth in mirthless amusement at Garrus. "Surprise," he deadpanned. "Vido wiped me out of the records," he explained. "He ran the books, I led the men. Worked real well for a while. Then Vido decided to start hiring batarians. 'Cheaper labor,' he said." He made a face. "'Goddamn terrorists,' I said."

Shepard folded her arms and leaned back on one hip. She was angry. "You didn't tell me about this for the slaves, did you?" She asked it like a question, but they all knew the answer. "Twenty years is a long time to hold a grudge."

Massani exploded. "A grudge?!" He shouted, flinging his arms out and stepping up into Shepard's face. Jack lit up blue with her biotics, but Garrus held up a hand. _Wait._ "Vido turned my men against me," Massani was saying. "He paid six of them to restrain me while he put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger! For twenty years, I've seen that bastard every time I close my eyes, every time I sighted down on a target, every time I heard a gunshot. Don't you call that a goddamn grudge!"

Jack's biotics died down, and there was a strange expression on her face. For the first time, Garrus had some idea of what might be going on in her head, and he shifted at the idea he might have it in common with her. There was a sour taste in his mouth and a knot in his gut. _Every time I close my eyes. Every time I sight down on a target._ There was a nasty echo here he wasn't liking at all. _First mission after Sidonis walks, and this is what we get. I would have been better off taking Miranda's optional leave._

 _Shepard couldn't have known. Could she?_ He looked over at her, and saw her eyes flit to him too. _No._ She hadn't known, but she saw the parallels just like he did. She turned her attention back to Massani, gesturing at his cybernetic eye, the scarring on his face. "Your head. You survived a gunshot to the head?"

Massani grunted. "Yeah." He jerked his hand toward Garrus. "He took a rocket. You survived your ship getting disintegrated. A stubborn enough person can survive just about anything. Rage is a hell of an anaesthetic."

Something stiffened in Shepard's face. _She_ didn't like Massani identifying with _her_. She shook her head. "We're here to free these people," she said. "Let's get moving." She hacked the bridge access terminal in a few deft strokes, and a metal bridge shrieked out from the other side of the ravine to connect with their side of the road. And Shepard folded up her sniper rifle, drew her Locust, and took point from Massani. The message was clear: _our_ mission, not yours.

Some of that rage Massani had mentioned crossed his face again. Garrus frowned. Massani wasn't any innocent. Seizing control of a mercenary gang from another hardened killer wasn't the same as betraying people who had once been your friends to their enemies. But he got where Massani's head was at. It was a little much that the former leader of the Blue Suns settle _his_ score when Shepard had stopped Garrus from settling his. Garrus was willing to bet that if Massani had held onto the Blue Suns all those years ago, they wouldn't be too different from what they were today, whether or not they took on batarians. Still, if they could manage to take down Vido Santiago within the narrow confines of Shepard's moral principles, Garrus would be happy to help Massani out, and he figured they would do a lot of good.

But Massani had lied here—kept back information about the mission that might have helped them out, anyway—and there was something ugly in his face. And if Massani hadn't been lying about the rest of the situation here, circumstances were very different than they'd been yesterday on the Citadel when Shepard had stepped into Garrus's crosshairs. Vido Santiago and the Blue Suns contingent here had a bunch of captive civilians in their power. The safety of the refinery workers came first, and Garrus would support Shepard in that, whether Massani liked it or not.

Garrus signaled Taylor behind Zaeed's back— _Watch him_ —and Taylor signaled back a discreet affirmative.

Santiago's voice came over the radio. "They're at the southern access," he said. "All squads, mass at the gatehouse, now!"

"They know we're here," Massani muttered. "Bring it on, you son of a bitch!"

"Squads Charlie, Delta! Mass at the gatehouse!" someone ordered.

"Sounds like it'll be fun in there," Jack remarked.

"If this is the gatehouse, maybe not just yet," Garrus replied. Shepard was hacking the door, and he switched his sniper for his assault rifle.

The door opened, and the five of them walked into the refinery gatehouse.

The Suns were waiting for them. The squads Santiago had sent for _hadn't_ arrived yet: Garrus saw just five other men in the room. Two on either side of the exit to the refinery courtyard, and three on the catwalk that ran over it, the guard post of the building.

The man in the center checked when he saw them. From the silver growing in at the temples of his gelled black hair and the fine lines across his face, similar to the wear on a turian's plates, Garrus guessed the human was in his fifties, maybe older. Roughly Massani's age, anyway, but while he was in the same excellent physical condition, the Blue Suns armor he wore was of a much higher quality than Zaeed's battered yellow plate. His face wasn't as rough, but looked crueler. So this was Vido Santiago, leader of the Blue Suns.

Santiago smiled slowly, white teeth flashing with amusement. "Zaeed Massani. You finally tracked me down."

Massani's hands tightened on his assault rifle. His face was so contorted it was almost unrecognizable. "Vido," he ground out.

More Blue Suns were filing in the gate now. Charlie or Delta Squad, it looked like, but not both. Santiago's smile widened. "Don't be stupid, Zaeed," he counseled. "I have a whole company of bloodthirsty bastards behind me, ready to kill or be killed on my command." He scoffed. "Actually, take your shot. Give my men a reason to put you down like the mad dog you are. Again."

Massani's chest was heaving. They were in a bad position, and it was getting worse by the moment, but Garrus still didn't expect it when Zaeed broke off in a run to the left, firing his assault rifle with a scream.

In a second, Garrus saw what he was doing. Massani's bullets had hit an exposed gas line in the gatehouse. It was the same move Shepard had made to even a tactically disadvantageous room back on Tuchanka, but here in a gas refinery, it would have far more dramatic consequences.

"No!"

"No, Zaeed—" Shepard started at the same time.

Santiago laughed as the gas hissed out of the pipes. "What was that? Gone nearsighted, old friend?"

Massani grit out the words between his teeth: "Burn, you son of a bitch!" He fired again.

Jack and Taylor saved their asses. Jack hurled Massani back from the explosion and threw up a barrier in front of them, but it would have failed in a second if Taylor hadn't done the same thing. The flames from the gas explosion licked over the barrier and couldn't pass it, but the heat still left Garrus gasping as oxygen rushed to feed the flames.

In the shadows behind the fire, Garrus saw Santiago and his men hurled back, shields flickering but not taken down. "You just signed your death warrant, Massani!" Santiago yelled.

Massani staggered to his feet and fired on the gas line in another place. More flames shot up. Garrus heard breaking glass and screaming in the distance.

"What the hell are you doing?" Shepard demanded. "There are civilians in there!"

"I'm opening the gate!" Massani snarled. The Blue Suns had retreated from the fire, heading toward an alternate exit. The gate was left undefended. They were free to charge into the refinery. But in the courtyard, the fires in the gas lines were already spreading.

Shepard was squared off against Massani. She was livid, eyes blazing as bright as the flames, SMG raised. "We don't sacrifice lives for the sake of the mission! There's always a better way."

Massani sneered. "Like on _Purgatory_? We could wander around the jungle for hours looking for another way in. You want to waste time out here, go ahead. I'm gonna kill Vido."

He turned away from Shepard, and in a flat second, she'd holstered her Locust, caught Massani's shoulder, and hit him with a hard hook to the jaw. Massani fell back, sprawling, glaring up at her.

"We completed our mission on _Purgatory_ ," Shepard snapped. "You're endangering ours right here—dozens of _innocent_ people—for your own selfish revenge."

Zaeed staggered to his feet. Behind him, around him, in the courtyard beyond, the flames he'd started were beginning to crackle, gaining strength, spreading. "You really want to do this, Shepard?" he challenged her.

Jack started glowing again, and Garrus raised his gun, but Shepard just turned on her heel. "I ought to knock you the hell out," she said, disgusted. "But thanks to you, we have a burning refinery to save."

Massani wiped his mouth, where blood was running from a split lip. He spat. "Let these people burn! Vido dies, whatever the cost!"

His mismatched eyes glowed with the reflected flames, and despite the growing fire, Garrus felt cold.

* * *

 **A/N: So I wrote huge chunks of this chapter and the following three back in February and March then lost all that work in a save failure. I tried to retrieve it in multiple ways but couldn't manage it. So I got sulky. All that work, gone! I could never recreate exactly what I had done. I was depressed. I was irritated. And, I discovered, I was a little burnt out. So after I got done sulking, I took several more weeks off, to rest my brain, and to rejuvenate my love for this story. But now I'm back at work on the second half of** _ **Sometimes Grace**_ **. I hope some of you people who were enjoying the story prior to my unexplained absence are back too. If you're new instead, welcome! Hope you like the fic too. I'm going to try and press forward a little more regularly now. This is an interesting phase of the story as well.**

 **Reviews are never required but always appreciated, and I reply to every one.**

 **Best Always,**

 **LMSharp**


	34. The Rivers of Hell: Lethe

**A/N: In Greek mythology, the Lethe was one of the five rivers of the Underworld, bordering Elysium, or heaven. When a soul drank of the waters of the Lethe, he or she would forget the earthly life. Only then could they be reborn into another. In Dante's** _ **Purgatorio**_ **, the Lethe flowed at the top of the mountain of Purgatory. Dante had to drink from it to forget his sins before Beatrice, the blessed, heavenly love, could show him the vision of paradise.**

* * *

XXXIV

The Rivers of Hell: Lethe

Garrus and the others followed Shepard into the refinery courtyard. Flames were crackling in the distance. Gas hissed from the valves Massani had broken all over the facility. The humid heat of Zorya was rapidly being swallowed in the dry, hungry heat of the spreading blaze. Massani's original mission was already a failure: they weren't reclaiming this place for the Eldfall-Ashland group. Every minute the fire spread was weeks more worth of damage. Soon there'd be nothing left to save—if this place didn't kill them all.

To the left, a man in a jumpsuit ran out of a section of the refinery down below. "Help!" he screamed up at Shepard. "We're trapped! We can't get to the gas valves to shut them off! The whole place is gonna blow!"

It was the first confirmation they'd had that Shepard was right—Santiago's people hadn't killed all the refinery workers like the guy in the jungle. There were some still alive, they were trapped, and Zaeed had put them all at risk.

The heat closed in on Garrus, and the smoke on the air tasted like panic. _You've done a lot of stupid crap in your day, Garrus, but you've never come in like this. You've never been the guy_ killing _civilians to get the target._ It didn't matter that the target was Vido Santiago, intersystem leader of the Blue Suns, didn't matter that taking him out could throw the entire cancerous organization into chaos. Garrus could hear the yelling now, past the one guy that had got out to ask for help. _Why do we do anything we do, Massani, except for guys like that?_

The refinery worker could leave. The path behind them, back to the ravine, the jungle, was clear. But he was staying, ready to plunge right back into the fire to save his coworkers.

Massani's face was hard. "No time," he grunted. "Vido's probably halfway to the shuttle docks by now." He started making his way ahead. Probably he knew the plans to the facility.

Something in Garrus snapped. "Shepard, we're not going to leave these people," he said. It wasn't really a question, but Shepard didn't hesitate to answer anyway. She vaulted the walkway railing down to the lower refinery, and without missing a beat, Garrus followed her. It was faster than running down the stairs.

"We're not letting them die," she told the others.

Taylor nodded, looking relieved. "Let's do it." He vaulted down to join them.

Massani was angry. He pointed toward the processing center where Santiago had gone. "We stop to help these people, and Vido gets away. And if he gets away, I'm blaming you." There was a dark, dangerous undercurrent to his voice, but Shepard just shook her head.

"We came to save them," she repeated. "We're saving them."

Jack glanced at Massani, then shrugged. She launched herself off the walkway and floated down to them on her biotics. "Into the fire then. Hell, yeah."

Shepard was already moving toward the refinery worker. Garrus moved after her, but looked back at Massani, who was hesitating on the main walkway. He shook his head. Massani couldn't take all Santiago's Blue Suns on his own. _But he's still thinking about it._ _He'd kill them all, kill us all just to shoot that guy in the head. If he's not careful, he'll kill himself._

Finally, Massani swore under his breath and vaulted after them. "I knew this was a mistake," he muttered. "If we're going to do this, we better get to it."

"Thanks," the refinery worker said hurriedly. He led them into the burning building ahead, and almost immediately doubled over, hacking. He reached down into his jumpsuit and tore, and a piece of his undershirt came away in his fist. He held it over his face, filtering the air with it, and gestured ahead with the other hand.

The air in the refinery was warping in the heat. The room was black with smoke, but Garrus could just make out another glass room on the other side of the one they stood in. Seven other men and women in jumpsuits were standing there. Some of them were banging on the glass. Some supported others, crying or screaming or just too weak to stand. The access panel to the room glowed red. Locked.

"The doors won't open until the fire's out," the man who had led them in shouted, "but I can't get to the valves or the sprinklers."

Shepard nodded, and plunged forward. "Hurry!" the man called after them.

Over the din of hissing gas and roaring flames, Garrus heard the screaming from the locked room. "We're going to die!"

"Don't worry!" Garrus yelled back. "We're on it!"

The gas valves they needed to shut off to prevent an explosion were around the room—Garrus could see them: little wheels of metal on the piping. Some were blocked off by fountains of flame where the piping had already given way. Others were blocked by the paneling, some of which had collapsed.

It was so hot that Garrus was already soaked in sweat. His eyes burned. His mouth was dry. Warnings flashed on his visor as he ran after Shepard, but Garrus ignored them.

 _At least there's nobody shooting at us at the moment._ The Suns had left these people to burn too.

Jack and Taylor were able to push at least some of the flames back with their barriers, but they couldn't do anything about the heat. One time, Garrus's shields went down in the two seconds it took him to shut off a single valve, and he pulled his hand away stinging, a five-centimeter circle warped and melted into the outer surface of the gauntlet. Medi-gel rushed to the area to cool and protect his hand, and the valve hadn't burned all the way through, but they took the rest of the valves in turns after that just the same.

All of them were crawling by the time they'd pushed through the entire room, shut off all the valves, and made it to the sprinkler system at the back, crouching as low to the ground as they could get, where the sight lines were clearer and the air was better. All the humans had started coughing. Garrus, adapted to higher temperatures and thicker air conditions than they were, was doing a little better, but even he was wheezing, feeling as though someone had shoved a fist full of sandpaper down his trachea and into his lungs. Shepard's eyes were bloodshot and streaming as she punched on the sprinklers.

The hissing as the water met the flames, the healthier steam that filled the room was amazing. Garrus felt the fire being dampened, start to die. The sounds coming from the other room changed—the screams became cheers, and the choking, desperate sobs of the terrified relaxed to become the freer sobs of men and women ransomed from death.

All five of them sprawled on the floor in front of the sprinkler system, gasping, each breath deeper than the last as the air began to clear. Massani was the first to stagger to his feet. "Let's go," he said. His voice was a harsh whisper, little more than a rasp, but he got it out.

Garrus shot Massani a disgusted look, but lurched to his feet anyway. He coughed as he did, trying to clear his throat. To his left, Shepard braced herself on her knees, head down as she tried to get her own breath back. Taylor reached out a hand to help Jack to her feet, and she took it. Her eyes were bright and shining, haunted but not defeated in her soot-stained pale face, but she turned to Shepard and nodded, ready to go.

This time, Zaeed led them through a passage on the right—an alternate route to the processing center.

As they left, Garrus saw the man that had called them into the lower refinery shepherding the others out, letting another, older man lean on his shoulders as they went. _Every mission, every bullet we fire, for guys like that_ , Garrus thought again. Shepard always remembered that. Sometimes he forgot. But he never, ever wanted to come in like this again, burning the people he should be saving, so intent on getting the bad guy that there stopped being any real difference—not to the people that mattered.

 _I won't forget that again._

Massani had worried that if they saved the refinery workers, they'd lose Santiago, but as they crossed into the processing facility, the sprinkler system still tinkling on metal floors all around, it was obvious he hadn't cleared out just yet. They kept intercepting his orders through Massani's patch on the radio. By scrapping Eldfall-Ashland's refinery, Massani _had_ effectively made Santiago's position here untenable. The fuel lines were wrecked. No way Santiago could make any kind of profit by staying. The smart thing for Santiago to do was to evacuate, regroup someplace else, and find another way to recoup any financial losses he had sustained here. But Garrus had heard the guy talk all of a minute, and he knew there were a few other concerns at play here.

Massani had founded the Blue Suns with this guy. Now that Massani had shown up again, everyone knew that when Santiago had made his play he had failed to kill Massani. Now Zaeed had trashed this entire operation. If he got away with it, Santiago would lose authority with his men. Zaeed had to pay, and so Santiago was hanging around, even though it was tactically smarter to withdraw.

He'd set up his remaining squads in defensive formations in the time they'd been putting out the fire in the refinery. Rear patrols, defensive lines, crossfire traps. Fires were still burning here and there across the facility, but most of the worst of it had been contained. So, of course, the Blue Suns had brought out flamethrowers.

They heard Santiago's orders over the radio as they fought: "First person to bring me Massani's head gets something special in their paycheck."

Massani stepped in close to a guy coming in, hit his elbow upward, and clubbed him in the head with the butt of his assault rifle. Taylor shot him when he went down. Jack pulled two guys out from behind the mess of pipework in the processing center. It was hard to make out the targets through the steam coming off the superheated metal, from where water from the sprinklers had instantly evaporated. Garrus's heat sensor was no help. But he managed one shot to the center of mass. Jack took care of the other.

Shepard wasn't using her usual incendiaries. Not here. Instead, she'd flipped a switch on her Locust to implement cryo rounds. Slowing down the enemy, cooling down the environs—at least a little. That a couple direct hits left the Blue Suns vulnerable to shattering into bits of blood and bone was just a bonus.

It was slow-going, pushing forward through the works, into the processing center proper. Santiago had stationed Blue Suns in each of the storage areas adjoining. Eight doors enemies could be hiding behind, at least. Too many places for them to run. And two minutes in, someone made Garrus and Shepard. "All squads," a human said over the radio. "Check it: _Massani isn't leading_. Repeat: Massani isn't leading. We've got high-tech flanking tactics and leadership from the rear. Mark the armored human female and the turian sniper."

"Shit," someone else said. "These guys were on Omega! It's Archangel and Commander Shepard."

"I don't care _who_ they are or _what_ they've done," Santiago sneered. "Put them down."

As the room became more dangerous for Garrus, Shepard, and Massani, however, Taylor and Jack just got deadlier, the enemy's focus on the named threats freeing up operations for the biotics. Garrus stayed in cover for the most part, hanging back near the entrance to the room behind heavy machinery and in corners. Making enemies come to him. Shepard took the opposite tack, playing decoy and inviting the Suns to chase her all over the room, using the shield-stealing program she'd learned from Tali to boost her defenses when she took fire and leave the Suns vulnerable for the rest of them at the same time. Taylor and Jack adapted at once, taking out the Suns by fours and fives as Garrus and Shepard drew them out. In the meantime, Massani had stolen a flamethrower from a dead heavy and torched anyone who came within two meters of him.

That was when some of the Suns had the bright idea to sabotage the fuel lifts to leak. They swung over the room, back and forth, pouring out flaming liquid, starting new fires where the old ones had gone out.

The air became hot and bad again. It tasted like oil and smoke. Garrus's throat burned and his eyes watered, making it even harder to make out the enemy. "Shoot the tanks!" Massani barked.

It was stupid. Shooting the tanks down would cause more explosions. The gas in the pipes was off, but if anything on the ground caught fire, the damage to the facility could get even worse. They didn't have time to head back to the sprinkler system. _If the Suns haven't already cut us off. I would have._

 _On the other hand_ , Garrus thought, _right now the fire from the tank is uncontrolled. It's burning everything._ Feeling a wave of wicked heat approaching, a roar of flames that stole his breath, he left the corner he had been posted in and ducked into a nearby storage room, away from the flames. A turian soldier ran at him. "Blue Suns!" Garrus took his first bullet on his shields, knocked the guy's gun aside, kicked him to the ground, and fired three rounds from the Vindicator straight into his skull. He was cut off from all of the others in here. He could hear Jack screaming defiance at someone, the burr of Shepard's Locust, the blat of Taylor's shotgun. The roar of the leaking tank passed on.

The storage room ran parallel to the main room, up ahead. Garrus followed it, and sure enough, there was another exit further on. Garrus moved back out into the main room, checked the sight lines, raised his gun, and fired. Five rounds. The tank fell from the lift, crashing to the ground and going up in a bloom of superheated fuel and deadly chemical reactions. A wave of pure heat radiated outward, but the room was big enough that Garrus was out of the blast zone, that all of them were. But at least half of the route back was now blocked as a new fire started crackling and growing behind them.

"Nice one," Massani called, approval in his voice.

"Well. We weren't going that way anyway," Garrus answered. He ignored the irritation in his gut at Massani's compliment. He didn't need Zaeed's approval. He didn't want it. _But the workers have to be out now. The gas is off, and the sprinklers are working. And we've got a job to do._

Taylor took out the other tank, up ahead, on the left side of the room. At least three Suns were barbecued in the blast. Garrus saw their armor fuse and melt together, and they fell, black and twisted, to the ground. Garrus looked away and fired at a batarian that had rounded the corner out of another storage room.

Santiago was getting angrier by the moment. His voice was higher, sharper, and now he spoke to Massani directly over the radio. "Even with Shepard and Archangel, you still don't have a chance!"

Jack fired three pistol rounds into a human heavy carrying another flamethrower ahead. "The rest of us aren't anything to sneeze at either, asshole!" she snarled.

Santiago was speaking like they were talking now. But he ignored Jack and spoke again to Zaeed. "I took your Suns, I took your life. Now I'm going to do it again."

It was possible he _was_ speaking directly to them, Garrus thought. If Massani had the know-how to hack into Santiago's transmissions, they couldn't rule out the possibility that Santiago could hack into theirs. On the _Normandy_ , the AI would have blocked him. That was her job. Her efficacy was limited planetside.

Whether Santiago had hacked into their transmissions or had just guessed they were patched into his, though, his goal was to make Massani careless. They were winning, and he knew it. His Blue Suns were getting fewer and fewer, and farther between. They couldn't relax just yet; the layout of the processing facility was too friendly to evasive enemies. But the Suns weren't fielding organized offensives against him or Shepard anymore; there weren't enough of them left. They were withdrawing, trying to stay out of the main room and take potshots from the storage rooms or move around and attack from behind. If Massani lost it again, though, they could potentially take back the advantage.

The sprinklers were running again, trying to put out the fires that had been started with the flamethrowers, the leaking fuel tanks, and the explosions in here. The air was better, but the floor was slick. Jack slid on it once, falling on her ass. She turned it into an attack, throwing her arm up over her head and biotically hurling the batarian in front of her behind her, back toward Shepard. Shepard took care of the guy for her. Garrus stripped the shields for from the human on Shepard's flank, enabling Massani to light him up without a hitch.

"Take a knee now, Zaeed, and maybe I'll forget this ever happened," Santiago hissed over the radio.

 _That's going to happen_ , Garrus thought, watching the tic jumping in Massani's jaw through his visor. They were more than halfway across the room now, moving toward the docks. Taylor took some fire from a human from storage. His barriers absorbed the shots. Taylor turned, knelt, and lunged, doing deliberately what Jack had done by accident moments before, using the water on the floor to slide under the enemy's fire and into his legs. The human went down in a tangle of limbs, and in a second, Jacob was up, making sure with his shotgun that his attacker stayed down.

Then it was over, or seemed to be. The concrete floor was a shining mess of blood, water, and liquid fuel. The lingering smoke and steam in the air carried the fumes. They burned in Garrus's nose. But he couldn't see or hear any more of Satniago's men in the place—they'd taken out every last one of his Suns.

Garrus heard a metallic whirring to his left then. He turned, and saw a camera aimed at the processing center pivot. Santiago was watching. _This isn't over._

"You never should have come here, Zaeed!" Santiago yelled. "Did you forget who you were dealing with?"

Across the floor, near the exit, something metallic moved. "Twelve o'clock!" Garrus snapped, as a YMIR mech that had been quietly folded up against the far wall stood up and opened fire.

Taylor, Jack, and Massani—the most exposed of the five of them—all dived into cover. Garrus and Shepard crouched down. The sound of the YMIR miniguns was deafening, bounced off of all the metal and the concrete in the refinery processing center. There was no lane of approach to the docks the mech didn't cover, the last few meters of the room didn't offer a lot of cover to get into close quarters with it, and there was no way to flank it either. Taking it out would be slow, it would be involved, and it would give Santiago all the time he needed to make his escape.

Massani knew it too. "No!" he screamed. "No!"

He tried to move out of cover, but the YMIR had his shields out in a second, and he ducked down again. "Goddamn it!"

"Fan out," Shepard said calmly, over the radio, because her voice would be lost in the fire without it. "They won't have had time to program target prioritization into it, and without preprogrammed instructions, YMIRs go for the biggest threat in the room. We're going to relay it. Garrus and I first; we'll take down its shields so Jack and Jacob can go for the armor. Zaeed, use the mech's distraction to move in closer, but stay in cover. Maybe you'll get a chance to take it out, but if you don't, the rest of you should have hurt it enough that I can finish it off with the missile launcher. Ready? Go."

Garrus understood the plan. They'd have to bounce the mech's attention from man to man so it never fired long enough at any one person to take them out, which meant that in addition to their effective attacks, each of them would need to fire long enough to register as the biggest threat in the room on the YMIR's scanners. He stood, sent his tech attack, and opened fire with the Vindicator. Five three-pulse bursts. The YMIR turned its miniguns on him, but by the time his shields went out, Shepard was making her attack. Garrus dropped back into cover, and the YMIR shifted its focus to the person actively attacking.

The effect was that by the time Taylor finished his attack, one of the YMIR miniguns was melted onto its forearm and useless with dark energy and one of its legs was stalling, fused into its hip. "That's right," Massani growled, on the YMIR's useless flank. He fired three rounds into the mech's other gun, effectively crippling it, and as its central processor began blinking red, indicating its self-destruct sequence had begun, Massani broke away, making for the exit and leaving the rest of them behind.

Over the radio, Garrus heard Shepard's sigh. She fired her missile launcher once, preempting the YMIR's self-destruct, and the four of them started after Massani. Before they left the processing center, though, Garrus knew it was too late. Santiago's voice sounded over the radio again, low and malicious. "Not this time, Zaeed, you son of a bitch. See you in another twenty years."

Garrus exited the refinery to the docking area and saw a shuttle flying off out over the Zorya jungle. Santiago. Zaeed screamed, firing blindly at it, every round in his assault rifle, until it clicked, out of ammunition. "Aaaaaaauuuugh!"

A bullet actually hit the shuttle. Garrus saw it buck. But it wasn't disabled. It kept flying. And the odds that Zaeed had hit Santiago? Pretty slim.

Massani ignited. He jettisoned a heat sink and rounded on Shepard. "You just cost me twenty years of my life!" he yelled.

But there was fuel all over the dock from the fire and the traps the Suns had left. The heat sink hit some. The flames licked up to a fuel barrel, and before anyone could react, the barrel and a good portion of the dock exploded.

The shockwave threw Garrus, Shepard, Jack, and Taylor back and off their feet. It did a lot worse to Massani. The explosion brought down some scaffolding and rebar on top of Massani. Garrus stood and saw him there, trapped under a crossbeam, too heavy for him to lift on his own. Massani kicked and struggled. It was useless. "Son of a bitch!" he swore.

The remnants of the explosion had started another fire, spreading out along the fuel dribbled out over the dock. Garrus felt the heat on his hide, felt the flames sucking at the air. He looked at the remaining fuel on the deck, the way it would lead the flames right up to Massani. Zaeed had two minutes. Maybe less. In the open air, he'd be breathing longer—but the fire would spread faster.

Shepard didn't move to help Massani out though. None of them did, and despite the heat, Shepard's face was as cold as Garrus had ever seen it. She shifted. "You started this fire, Zaeed," she said. Her voice was soft, but it sent a chill down Garrus's spine. "Makes sense that you'll burn in it."

Garrus stared. Massani was reckless, insubordinate. He'd scrapped the mission they had agreed to in order to pursue his own objective, put every single one of the people they'd come here to save at risk.

 _More than that, he put them in danger in the first place_. Garrus remembered the screams of the workers in the refinery, how they'd hugged one another, wept, and waited for the end, caught in a death trap. Massani had created it, and he'd wanted to leave them there.

Now, any turian commander would court-martial Zaeed at the very least, and Garrus had known several who would have strung him up or shot him in the head right here _. And no one higher up the meritocracy would argue, either._

But Shepard? He had known her a while now, even setting aside the time she'd spent dead _. I thought I knew her well._ He would have guessed she was capable of court-martialing a reckless, insubordinate soldier, but never that she could execute him without a trial in the field, no matter how justified an execution might be.

 _And leaving a man to burn alive?_

Garrus wasn't saying she was wrong. It was what Massani would have left those workers to. Like she said: it made sense. It was justice. Garrus had served criminals in similar ways— _never anyone that fought with me, but I understand_.

Still, there was something in his gut that squirmed to see _Shepard_ letting that fire burn, leaving Zaeed trapped there.

 _He's crazy, a loose cannon—and he deserves it._

It was true. He knew it. _But since when has Shepard given anyone what they deserve?_

 _You idiot, you hypocrite, make up your mind! What the hell do you want from her?_

Still, Garrus didn't believe her, not entirely, and neither did Massani. He thrashed under the rebar. "Yeah? Screw you! Now come on, get me out of this shithole!"

Shepard raised her eyebrows to look down at Massani and didn't budge. "Why?" Garrus's gizzard clenched. "You dug it. You put your revenge ahead of the mission. How can we trust that you'll be there when we need you?"

 _Damn, there's an edge to that._ Garrus heard it. He saw that Taylor and Jack did too. None of them had ever disobeyed Shepard's orders as such. None of them had ever put anyone else at risk, even Jack, but all three of them had been distracted. With the Collectors already starting the work of the Reapers, Garrus knew all three of them had been navel-gazing, caught in their own crap when the galaxy needed their full commitment to the mission. _If the Reapers kill us all, it won't matter that Sidonis might just do six months. Shepard's been doing what she can for us, because we might as well take a little more time to prepare so we have better odds in the end, but if we don't, all of us, get it together, this whole initiative could fall apart, and it'll be us that she can't trust._

Massani spat. "I'll do what I was goddamn paid to do, Shepard. Just don't expect any more than that. Now stop screwing around, and let's go!"

She still didn't move. Massani had a minute and a half now, probably. The crackle of the flames was closer to the fuel spill. Garrus could feel the heat, through his armor and on the back of his head.

A vein started jumping in Massani's neck. Underneath his sweat, his red face went a shade paler. He looked around at the rest of them. "Jack? Taylor? Vakarian?"

Garrus could see the same struggle he felt in Jack and Jacob's faces. _He deserves this. But can we watch it?_

Jack was shaking. Her fists were clenched, and biotics flared around her, a centimeter deep all around. "You could've blown us all up, asshole!" she yelled. "You're on your own."

Taylor hesitated. His jaw was tight. He glanced at Garrus, back at the refinery, but he didn't move either.

Shepard squatted down in front of Massani. "You put your own goals ahead of the mission," she told him. "That's not the way this works."

She wasn't going to leave him. If she was talking about _the way this works_ , this was a teaching moment, not an execution. _Hell if I know why, but I'm relieved_.

But Massani wasn't getting it. "I've survived this long watching my own back," he growled. "No time to worry about anyone else."

In one fluid movement, Shepard had drawn her pistol, removed the safety, and pointed it at Massani's head. "You're part of a team now, Zaeed. There's no way we can do this unless we're all working together." She held his gaze for a long moment, then rotated the pistol in her hand so the grip was facing him instead.

 _This is Shepard_ , Garrus thought. The lightest sentence an offense like Massani's would be likely to get in the Hierarchy was a dishonorable discharge—kicked off his mission and out of his unit and down to subcitizen on the meritocracy, on level with children and client races. And the officer that handed it down would be considered soft and risk losing the respect of his or her subordinates. Shepard wasn't even doing that much—she was giving Massani an outright second chance. But there was nothing soft or weak about it, and somehow, in this moment when she offered her trust again to the guy that put her life and the lives of others in danger with her eyes wide open, she had more authority than any officer he'd ever seen.

Everyone felt it. Taylor's jaw had relaxed. He was radiating approval. Jack's biotics had died down. There was uncertainty in _her_ face—a tremor in her jaw, a confused slant to her brows. But she wasn't going to fight Shepard on this, either.

Garrus acknowledged his own admiration for Shepard was mixed in with a little more bitterness than there used to be just now.

 _I'll work it out later._

For now, if Massani was stubborn, Garrus would shoot him dead with no regrets. He thought all four of them would. But if _they_ were going to put the mission first, they needed to put what had happened here behind them and move on.

Zaeed stopped struggling beneath the rebar. "You—you have a point," he said. "I'm not done with Vido, but I can put that behind me long enough to get your mission done."

Shepard stepped back, holstered her gun, and nodded at Garrus and Taylor. Garrus stepped up. He and Taylor stooped and together lifted the rebar off of Massani. As soon as Massani was free, they let the metal fall back to the ground. The five of them walked away from the fuel spill just as it went up in flames.

Niels had obviously been monitoring communications, because in a moment, he'd flown down the Kodiak. Shepard got in first and sat. For a moment, she wasn't the commanding figure that had stood over Zaeed less than a minute earlier—she was an exhausted, fairly slim woman without a weapon in her hands who had just blocked off access to two of her guns and the missile launcher, and Garrus saw Zaeed realize it. He hesitated, and Garrus could almost hear the twenty years of pent-up rage simmering in him. Garrus, to Massani's left and slightly behind him, put a hand on his assault rifle, but Shepard didn't flinch, and Massani nodded at nothing.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he grunted, swinging up into the Kodiak.

Garrus followed him, taking the seat across from him and beside Shepard.

* * *

Garrus sat in the battery. He stared at the gunnery console, but all he could see was the flames licking over the Eldfall-Ashland refinery. He could hear the screams of the trapped workers, civilians coopted by the Blue Suns, defenseless and in the middle of everything that had happened completely by accident. He could hear Shepard, Jack, and Taylor, coughing in the smoke.

 _Vido dies, whatever the cost!_

Garrus swallowed. His hands tightened on the console.

Vido Santiago hadn't been worth it, leader of the Blue Suns or not. Not all those people in the refinery, and not the jeopardization of the larger mission.

 _No one's worth that_.

Now, he wasn't any Zaeed Massani. Never had been, never would be. But Garrus knew he'd been guilty enough of forgetting what was really important. Ever since Sidonis had betrayed his men, he'd been all too willing to ignore the people he still could protect and put off the fight against the Collectors—letting who knew how many hundreds or thousands of human colonists get taken in the meantime—so he could hunt Sidonis down.

 _Tell the truth. You abandoned the real fight years ago. After Shepard, after Mom, you got tired enough of swimming against the current that you gave up. Ran away to hunt gangsters on Omega like Shepard beat the Reapers for good at the Citadel. Like they were as imaginary as the Council said they were. How many people have died or been subjected to the Collectors' sick experiments, been indoctrinated or turned into husks because you were angry and fixated on some bastard you_ could _beat?_

 _. . ._

 _Too many._

 _What were you going to do, take on the entire Council by yourself? Every commentator and psychologist that said Shepard was crazy, every salarian doctor and asari matriarch and propo vid that said Saren worked her over and that the threat was done? They sidelined Anderson. They split up the crew and assigned them to backwaters, and you saw them do it._

 _They wouldn't air a word I said and slapped me with a penalty every time I spoke up besides._

 _You still could have done something. Something. You could have kept trying._

Garrus's eyes stung, still raw from the smoke and fumes down on Zorya. His throat was raw. He had taken a shower, but he still tasted ash.

He hadn't done enough then, and he wasn't doing enough now. He knew it. There were individuals across the galaxy that still believed Shepard had told the truth about the Reapers. There had to be. A professor here, a conspiracy theorist there. An enclave of hanar dedicated to the Enkindlers. Specialists like Liara who had studied the patterns of past cycles and knew there had to be some bigger reason behind Saren Arterius allying with the geth than _because he hated humans_. The misanthropes and outlaws that settled out here in the Terminus had to be panicking by now, reaching out to one another with theories about why so many colonies were disappearing. But there weren't enough people out there that were really worried. There weren't enough people out there really planning for the return of the Reapers, and if the entire crew of the _Normandy_ died taking out the Collectors in three weeks—or failing to do so—the galaxy would be left defenseless, completely open to the Reapers' next attack.

On impulse, Garrus opened up a new message on his omni-tool. He stared at the blank display for a moment, uncertain. His father had contacts in the Hierarchy. Castis Vakarian had the power to make the right people listen, start preparing a defense, even when the _Normandy_ went down. If Garrus could make _his father_ listen. If Castis was even in a position where he _could_ listen right now.

Garrus's fingers hovered over his omni-tool. His mandibles tightened.

 _Not yet._

He'd have to send a message eventually. It would be irresponsible and stupid not to. But if Castis didn't believe him, or if the message distracted him from Garrus's mother's last few weeks—

 _Not yet_.

In the end, Garrus just wired more credits to his family account. The Cerberus funds had come in again a couple days ago. Garrus sent it all. _I'm not likely to need it. Not anymore._ With the transfer, he sent a simpler message, to Solana and his mother as well as to his father.

 **I can afford it. Don't worry about me. I can't tell you where I am, but I'm doing some good out here. I hope so, anyway. I can't come home. I wish I could. You deserve better. I'm sorry.**

— **G**

Garrus looked over the message and sent it. Then he shut off his omni-tool and started up a calibration sequence on the Thanix.

* * *

 **A/N: Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	35. The Well of Urd: Mimir's Demand

**A/N: In Norse mythology, the Well of Urd, or the Well of Destiny, is located beneath the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. The creature Mimir dwelt there, the wisest being in all the cosmos, because he drank of the waters of the well. The god Odin went to the well one day, in pursuit of wisdom like to Mimir's, but Mimir said Odin could not drink, unless he make a mighty sacrifice to do so.**

* * *

XXXV

The Well of Urd: Mimir's Demand

There were three messages on Garrus's omni-tool the next morning. He swallowed when he saw them. He hadn't thought all of them would reply. He hadn't known if his mother would be able to. But there they were, blinking in a row. **Sol**. **Mom**. **Dad**.

Garrus lay back down on his cot slowly. Breathing in, he selected the message from his sister.

It was about what he would have expected from her. Terse and angry, with the same accusations she'd been sending him for months—as valid now as they had been all along and still changing nothing.

She was warmer toward the end: **Thanks for the credits. Good to know you haven't forgotten us completely. Also, re vids: you're lying about something, G. I could have sworn you told me you weren't working for a zombie, and some version of** _ **her**_ **is in every single one. Still, the turian that I guess is supposed to be you shows up almost as much. How often do you go out with her? I know you probably feel tough, saving the galaxy with Commander Shepard. Don't let her get you killed. Maybe she can come back from the dead, but I don't want you pushing** _ **your**_ **luck, brother.**

— **S**

Garrus hesitated before tapping his father's message. Saying he and his father had a tendency to butt heads was putting it mildly. He hadn't known his father well growing up; Castis had lived apart from the family most of the time when he was young, working C-Sec on the Citadel and only returning to Palaven for short leaves. Still, Castis could have never been accused of neglecting his children. Auralie had communicated regularly with her husband—emails and video calls that had often taken on the qualities of military reports, and when Garrus had been young, lunches with dad had felt like inspections.

 _And I was never good enough_. There had always been something more he was supposed to do, something to improve on, or a different way to look at things. As a child, Garrus had been terrified of his father. When he got older, he had just been annoyed. Things hadn't gotten really bad, though, until a few years after Garrus had entered his service to the Hierarchy, after basic and a couple years in the fleet. Garrus had been doing good work in the fleet, enough that his superiors had been looking at him for special tactics and reconnaissance. Castis had found out about it. He'd gotten in touch and made it clear he didn't want Garrus training for the Spectres. He'd suggested C-Sec as an alternative.

So Garrus had gone to C-Sec, and _there_ he had gotten to know his father a lot better than he wanted. They didn't even work the same ward, but Castis always managed to involve himself in Garrus's business anyway. It wasn't enough for him to get lectured by his superiors; when he screwed up, his dad called too. It wasn't enough for him to just do his job, either; he had to be better than everyone else.

Under all the irritation, through all the frustration and miscommunications, Garrus knew his dad loved him; was proud of him, even. Or had been, anyway. But Castis Vakarian was like the worst hard-bitten, ball-busting son of a bitch turian CO that ever lived. He expected perfection, nothing less. When he'd left C-Sec for Shepard, the first time, and would have dropped out of service altogether if he had to in order to get Saren, Garrus thought his father would disown him, he was so angry. Of course, they had ended up saving the galaxy, so Garrus had been forgiven, but after that, he hadn't _wanted_ forgiveness. Things had been strained between them ever since, and the last time Garrus had spoken to his father, he had thought that he was dying. His father had tried to talk him through it and told him to come home.

 _And I haven't talked to you since. Sorry, Dad._

Garrus opened the message.

 **I am writing to you from a salarian laboratory in downtown Cipritine,** ran Castis's email, **where your sister and I have been given rooms so we can stay close to your mother as she undergoes her treatments. For some reason, she has been invited to participate in a special study certain elements from Sur'Kesh are running on Corpalis Syndrome. The program is generally very exclusive. They accept perhaps fifteen cases per year galaxy-wide, none as advanced as your mother's so as to provide a more longitudinal study. I would be interested to hear someday how you formed contacts at such high levels in the circles of salarian bioresearch personnel. Not in C-Sec, certainly. Thank you.**

 **Your mother is not improving, nor do the doctors think she will, but her deterioration has slowed, and with the new medication she is on, Solana believes her periods of lucidity are longer. She asks about you. Yesterday, your email made her day. She smiled for an hour and was able to tell the doctors three stories from your childhood before her memory lapsed again. Solana believes sometimes focusing on us helps your mother stay calm. Certainly her faculties and her anxiety become worse on days the doctors do not allow her to see us. It would do her good to see you, I think.**

 **I do not understand why you cannot return to Palaven. Solana blames you for it, and I am sure you know there is limited time. However, you might wish to know that your actions do not to me indicate a lack of consideration for the three of us or for your duty. I gather that there has been a substantial change in your situation since last we spoke, both in your employment and in your outlook on life. There are common threads in vids that your sister has referred to me. One, along with your words, suggests you might be attending to a different kind of duty now, a duty the Citadel Council shrinks from due to its difficulty. The other I find almost impossible to believe—but it would explain much.**

 **Take care of yourself, son. Be smart. Be safe. Following your own example, I won't send more over an unsecured channel, but whatever the facts are about what you are doing, I know it is probably dangerous. You never were one to take on the easy assignment. I look forward to when this one is over, however. I think we have several things to say to one another.**

— **Castis Vakarian**

The formal signature was just like Dad, Garrus thought. He shook his head and chuckled. _Am I homesick for Dad's office on the Citadel? One of those dinners where he told me everything wrong with my life?_ He was. If he went back to the Citadel now, his father wouldn't be there, but on Palaven, his father was waiting.

 _We do have things to say to one another_. Over the past couple years, Garrus hadn't come to agree with the strict limits Castis set on everything, but as things had gone south on Omega, and since, Garrus had started to understand why his father might have set such strict limits on _him_.

 _Did you always know about me, Dad, or could anyone have made the mistakes I did without your rules? Probably not. Not the same mistakes. But mistakes. Either way, you knew more than I gave you credit for._

 _I think you would know, if I told you everything, why I'm doing this now. "Do something right or don't do it at all"—that's what you always said. I've screwed that up so many times. But not this time, Dad. Not the one you wanted me to get right, probably. But that's the way it goes._

Garrus stared at his mother's message for a long time before he opened it. But, it turned out, he hadn't had to worry. There was no text, just two image files. Not even holos; flat photographic portraits.

The first was an old family portrait his mother had had made years ago, right before he had gone off to basic. Solana was still bareface, her expression artificial and wooden, in a dress that he remembered she'd hated. His own tattoos were still fresh, the blue so bright it looked bloody, and his face was swollen. He remembered how stiff the new uniform had been, but he had been excited to wear it, looking forward to going off and making his mark on the galaxy. _Idiot._ Auralie stood behind her two children, a hand on each of them. She was the only one smiling for the camera with any authenticity. Her amber eyes were warm and proud. She stood strong and tall. The last time he had seen her, all that had been gone. She hadn't been as bad as she was now—the clumsiness had just been starting to become problematic for her, the confusion just starting to scare her. And now if she was _lucid_ for a couple of _hours_ it was a victory.

She wasn't in the second photograph. Garrus guessed she had taken it, in one of those hours of lucidity. This photo was of Castis and Solana, and they hadn't known Auralie had taken it. They stood together, their backs to the camera, in front of a ceiling-to-floor plate glass window. They were pretty high up, in a skyscraper. A good bit of Cipritine was visible outside of the window. And Garrus's father had his arm around Solana's shoulders. His posture was loose enough that it was obvious he was taking comfort from his daughter as much as he was giving it to her. Solana's posture spoke absolute exhaustion. She rested her head on Castis's shoulder.

Garrus swallowed again. His hands shook as he shut off his omni-tool. Then he turned it back on again—and he saved both photos to his personal files.

It was 0645, _Normandy_ time. I should probably get up. Head to breakfast. There's always work to do, and we could be making for that IFF today.

He didn't get up. Instead, he slouched down lower on his cot, closed his eyes, and missed his family. Just for a little while.

* * *

The day wore on, and for a few hours, Garrus thought they really were making for the Reaper IFF in the Hawking Eta cluster at last—the mission that would mark their first overtly offensive move against the Collectors. Joker was flying them across the galaxy, from relay to relay. The crew went about their daily tasks, but there was a hum of apprehension in the air. Everyone knew they were moving soon.

But when the _Normandy_ stopped relay-jumping, astrogating the next jump, moving on to the next, they came out in the Nubian Expanse instead. Close to the Hawking Eta cluster—in the same neighborhood of the Terminus—but still hours away.

Garrus was expecting the knock on his door when it came. He wasn't expecting for it to be Jack.

She was kitted out for another ground mission, guns already hooked on her belt and the leather harness she wore over her shirt now, but she looked as uncomfortable as she always did above the engineering deck. Over the last few months, she'd stopped only coming to the crew deck during the night shifts, when everyone not on duty was sleeping. She'd eaten a few meals with some of the crew stationed down in engineering. Grunt and Tali. Daniels once. But she was still pretty cagey up here. She still preferred eating early or late, and he'd seen her leave the mess if there were too many other people. She'd only sought Garrus out the one time, after Horizon, though she'd throw a few routine insults his way any time she saw him.

Almost all of the hostility he'd felt from her those first few weeks was gone now. Still, if she was here now, it meant there was something special in the works. Garrus could guess the shape of it. Jack had taken what went down on Zorya a bit too personally, when Shepard had called Massani out for distraction from the mission. Everyone on the _Normandy_ had their own loose end, their own bit of business to tie up before they could really commit to what was probably a suicide mission. Jack had had plenty of time to find whatever she needed in the files Shepard had given her access to when she had come onboard, and now she had something she wanted to take care of here in the Dakka system.

 _And judging from Jack's face right now and the fact that Shepard brought us here, we're_ not _committing the murder any of us could have expected Jack would want us to commit. She wouldn't be this nervous about a murder._

Garrus ran through the possibilities in his head. Whatever they were here for, it was low-risk, or Shepard would have called out more of the squad. It was also incredibly personal, or Shepard would have tagged Garrus to come along herself. It wouldn't have been an issue. So: Shepard had insisted she and Jack have backup, but she'd left the choice of _which_ backup to Jack, and Jack was here this afternoon because _she_ wanted to be, because _she_ had chosen to come to Garrus, and not because Shepard had.

Garrus extrapolated this in less than a second from the way Jack stood in the battery entry way; the unstable current flowing off her; and the quick, nervous heart rate. She needed something from him, and she thought he was about to tell her to go to hell.

"Going somewhere?" he said lightly. He didn't move to invite her into the battery. Everything in her body language said she didn't want to come in. In his space, she'd feel trapped. Twice as vulnerable as she already was just coming here.

He was unarmed. _She has two guns and enough biotic power to go toe-to-toe with an asari matriarch, but she still feels small, doesn't she?_

 _Whatever this is, it's big_.

Jack shifted. "There's a Cerberus facility down on Pragia. Defunct. Empty. Shepard and I are going to blow it to hell. She says we need backup. Says I can pick the team. You're always with us anyway. I figure you might as well come this time."

Garrus hummed. "And we're good to bomb a Cerberus facility?" He kept his voice even, giving nothing away. "Even empty, there might be resources there our allies want to keep."

Jack's eyes blazed. "Too fucking bad." She turned away and walked a pace. "Anyway, I doubt it. The place is a waste. I wasted it myself. But I didn't have a bomb then. I want to finish the job. Shepard cleared the op."

Garrus tilted his head. "'Cerberus has been after me for years,'" he recalled. "This wouldn't be where it started, would it?"

"You want to know why I hate them? It's there," Jack confirmed. "All of it. All I know, all I am, started right down there. Maybe you'll learn something. You and Shepard both. All I'm asking is for someone to carry the bomb. You can't do that, I'll ask someone else."

She was on edge, wound as tight as he'd ever seen her, and more brittle than she'd been even on _Purgatory_ in a burning ship. Garrus shrugged. "I'll help. My guess is Shepard would probably see it as a bonus if we _do_ blow up anything Cerberus might still want in this facility."

That got a smile—one with a nasty edge to it, but then, that was usually the only kind of smile anyone could get from Jack. "She's not dumb. More of a goody two-shoes than I would have believed _existed_ outside of fairy tales. But she knows what they are. Or some of it anyway."

She started to turn around, mission accomplished. He'd meet her in the shuttle bay to go down to Pragia when they were in orbit. But she held back, and Garrus waited. For a long time, she didn't say anything. "Thanks," she muttered finally.

Garrus didn't bother answering. Any trite, polite, and generic response he could make would set her off. _You're welcome_ she wouldn't believe. _No problem_ or _It's nothing_ downplayed what this was to her. So he accepted her thanks, and waited two minutes before equipping his own guns and heading to the elevator.

Shepard had the ordnance ready for him in the shuttle bay. "How'd you clear it with Cerberus to requisition one of these?" He asked her, looking through the green canvas bag to make sure everything was disconnected and the explosives couldn't be activated by accident.

"We've got some leverage," Shepard answered. "Cerberus needs us to take out the Collectors and they know it." She gave a small smile. "Anyway, it isn't a bad idea to test the equipment we'll be using to take out the Collector base."

Garrus hummed. Of course, she was right. In fact, he bet Lawson had requisitioned two or more bombs—not nuclear, but capable of destroying a military base or space station—to begin with. She would have wanted materiel to test with and for backup, in case something malfunctioned or there was more than one Collector base past the Relay to destroy. "So, are we training someone else for this, or did Jack just decide I'm blowing up the Collector base?" he asked drily. It wouldn't make sense to have one demolitionist on a practice run and another on the Collector base.

Shepard quirked a brow at him and said nothing. Garrus nodded. Shepard had guessed Jack would come to him. It was just a matter of familiarity. _Easier to ask the guy who's always there a favor_.

It wasn't like there were too many people trained in demolitions on Shepard's ground team. _The professor, probably. Massani. Maybe Taylor. Lawson—but that would be a stretch_. Maybe he should have guessed Shepard would want him on the bomb in the Collector base, but it made him itch, thinking about it. He was competent enough with demolitions tech, but he generally preferred standing guard over the person arming the big bomb instead.

 _Alenko on the sand on Virmire, sweating and overheated, with a bullet in the leg and a fluctuating barrier, sabotaging the control panel and fusing the wires so even the geth couldn't deactivate the bomb, with incoming troopers and krogan on three sides and his guards already down in the dirt._ Shepard had decided that Kaidan's objective was more critical to the success of the mission than Williams's. They'd gone back for him instead of evacuating Williams from the tower, but everyone that had been on the _SR-1_ during that tour knew that it could have been Kaidan that day—especially Kaidan.

Then again, it wasn't like many of them were likely to get out of the Collector base anyway, no matter who was more exposed for a couple minutes arming the bomb. And it wasn't like he couldn't trust Shepard to watch his back. _That, she can do._ And she wouldn't let anyone else do it either, not when the mission would depend on that bomb going off.

All the wires in the bomber bag were disconnected, in a separate pocket entirely from the primary device. Garrus closed the gag and slung it across his body and over his back. He adjusted his guns, making sure he could still detach them in a hurry, and followed Shepard to where she and Jack were already waiting by the shuttle.

The tension was thick enough to cut with a combat knife as Niels flew them down to the world Jack wanted to visit, Pragia. Heavy clouds swirled over the planet, obscuring the surface. As soon as the Kodiak passed through them, it was raining—a hard, steady, soaking rain. It was night on the side of the planet Jack wanted to visit. Niels whistled and turned on the shuttle shields and headlights to navigate.

" _Nice_ place, Commander. Atmospheric."

"Shut up, moron," Jack mumbled. She stared out the display. Her left thigh bounced up and down. Nervous energy. Biotics crackled over her skin from time to time, like solar flares.

The shuttle beams fell on a dilapidated concrete structure, cracked and molding, settled below in the middle of a wet jungle landscape. "I forgot how much I hate this place," Jack said in an undertone, passionately. She pointed out toward the top of the building. "See the landing pad? Has to be on the roof, or the vegetation would overgrow it in a few hours."

EDI broke in then. "Shepard, I'm picking up thermal signals everywhere, except at your landing zone."

Jack blinked. The knee stopped moving up and down. "Something's distorting the sensors," she said.

Garrus tilted his head. "This was a secret Cerberus facility?"

Jack understood what he was getting at. She relaxed. Just a bit. "Yeah. They build their equipment to last," she agreed. "Assholes." She looked across at Shepard. "It was a mistake coming back here, Shepard," she said. Garrus had seen Jack nervous and out of her element before. Now she seemed afraid.

 _What happened to her here?_

Shepard's gaze was level. "Get a hold of yourself," she said evenly. "It'll be okay."

Jack raised her chin and threw back her shoulders. "I'm fine!" she retorted. "Okay. Let's get on the ground."

"Watch it down there," Niels advised, settling on the landing pad and opening the door. "The jamming signal might not be left over from Cerberus."

It had occurred to all of them, but Garrus nodded up at Niels anyway. He stepped out into the rain after Shepard and Jack. He took a breath, and enough water for a decent drink fell into his mouth. The rain was thick; heavy and unrelenting. It wasn't cold rain but warm, humid and suffocating. Visibility was poor. Garrus spat and grimaced. Up ahead, he saw water falling off Jack and Shepard's noses. Shepard looked as disgusted as he was, but Jack was angry. "Let's just get in there and plant the bomb in my cell. I want to watch this place burn."

She led them down steps set in the roof to an unlocked door. It opened, and the three of them stepped inside out of the rain. There were leaks in the roof, and the floor was damp and mildewed, but at least they were out of the worst of the weather.

Garrus took off his visor and shook it to clear the water off. He took a look around. Emergency lighting flickered overhead, illuminating a room even more depressing than the scene outside. The floor was cracked and broken gray tile. The walls were naked concrete. And scattered over the floor were large, empty cargo containers. Garrus's mandibles tightened. He'd seen containers like these before.

Jack regarded the room, the clear evidence of people that had been trafficked here, without any noticeable change in her expression. "I never saw this room," she remarked. "But they brought new kids in these containers. They were messed up and starving, but alive. Usually."

Garrus took a breath. Swallowed. "This is . . . unbelievable." He'd known, before, that Jack had a story—probably an ugly one. He had no idea it was anything like this. His first impulse was to start taking vid on his visor, record the evidence. But there was no law out here, no one to report what had happened here to. And they'd come here to destroy the evidence.

 _They can put you through hells like you've never seen_ , Jack had told him her first night on the _Normandy_ , talking about Cerberus. Garrus had seen Cerberus lure units into thresher maw attacks, torture captured soldiers for years on end to explore that trauma. He had seen them isolate rachni and parts of Feros's thorian to study, use an entire colony to experiment with geth husks. He hadn't believed her. Watching Jack dismiss starving, kidnapped children, packed in freight containers without sufficient air or water like he knew they had to have been, like that hadn't even been close to the worst thing that had happened here, he was starting to rethink that.

And these were the people they were working with to stop the Collectors. "Shepard—"

Something in Shepard's expression stopped him. She tapped her radio, eyes bleak, and Garrus nodded. _EDI's listening._

Cerberus had been paying him for months now, and Garrus had had his doubts from the start. But he also had never felt as trapped as he knew Shepard had. She didn't hear the way Taylor talked about her; she didn't see the way Chambers looked at her. Both of them like she was more of a spirit than a woman, some force of nature. The two of them were Cerberus like no one else in the crew, but Shepard had had them almost since Garrus had joined up. It had taken longer with Lawson. A lot longer. But Garrus had known from day one that Miranda was only ever as effective as Shepard let her be—and that Miranda knew it too. Even aside from that, though, Shepard was winning her over too. Lawson was grateful to Shepard for her own sake now, admired her for her own sake. She wanted Shepard's trust—for her own sake—not just because the Illusive Man wanted her to earn it. Over the past few weeks, Garrus thought the two of them had been working on one another, both tired of the shutout, each trying to persuade the other to cooperate with more than just clenched teeth—Miranda trying to get Shepard to commit to Cerberus and not just the mission against the Collectors; Shepard trying to get Miranda to see what Cerberus really was, that the corruption was more than just one bad cell. _And I know who I'd bet on to win that fight_. Shepard had always had more power on the _Normandy_ than she had thought.

But looking around the room, feeling how helpless they were to do anything about what had happened here, Garrus could see Shepard's side of it. He could understand Tali a little better. He definitely had a new perspective on Jack, and considering _this_ had been her experience of Cerberus, he had a new respect for the guts she'd shown staying on as long as she had and working with them as much as she had.

They couldn't speak openly about what had happened here, couldn't talk about what they might do about it after they were done with the Collectors. _If we get done with the Collectors_. EDI filtered everything they said, and any of it might get back to the Illusive Man. Garrus's fists clenched beside him, and he looked away from the empty containers. He could see the children that would have been inside them all too clearly. After all these years, they were still stained and discolored with things he didn't want to think about. Some things you didn't forget. Cerberus had condoned it. And Jack had lived it.

Garrus and Shepard, silent, followed Jack through a corridor, down a few steps and into another room. There was a staticky terminal near the floor here, the kind that had once probably hosted a VI to record and share information through the facility. Garrus used his omni-tool to strengthen the signal. It was ten or fifteen years old now; old tech, and the hardest part was finding a program that could still interface. Eventually, he got in. There wasn't a lot of data left, just part of an old log. A man in a Cerberus uniform appeared on the holodisplay. The audio was fuzzy, but easy enough to understand. "The Illusive Man requested operation logs again. He's getting suspicious. When we get results, he won't care what we did. But if he knew . . ."

The recording froze. Garrus paced away from the terminal, angrier than before now. "It sounds like this facility went rogue." It was almost worse now. Everyone who had worked here was probably dead now, but there had been some comfort in holding the Illusive Man and Cerberus responsible for the kids that had filled those containers—dead and alive. For the way Jack hid below the engineering deck like a beaten dog and her wary eyes whenever she had to talk to anyone else. _The way she snaps at Mordin when he talks about surgical enhancements that wouldn't make any of the rest of us flinch._

 _But if the scientists here hid their operations from the Illusive Man, even if we brought this to the Council or confronted the Illusive Man about what happened here, Cerberus would just deny it._

 _I hope blowing this place up is good enough for Jack; I would want more than that._

Jack snorted. "It didn't say what they were hiding from the Illusive Man," she told him. _This won't be enough for her either. It couldn't be. But it will be a start anyway._

Jack led them around another corner. Garrus saw boxes of processed eezo lying around. _So. They brought the kids here—kidnapped or bought or otherwise trafficked—to what? Experiment with biotics?_

It would make sense. Jack was the strongest human biotic he'd ever seen, with more endurance and power than even L2s could manage without their brains boiling in their skulls. Jack had been a Cerberus experiment, he realized. It made everything fit. The history with and hatred for Cerberus. The familiarity with drugs she had shown on Illium— _but she didn't use; they used them_ on _her_. The surgical scars. The lack of any surname or any official documentation anywhere—and he'd looked, right after _Purgatory_.

He tried to imagine a childhood like that—an experimental subject for an organization without boundaries or conscience, in a facility doing things even beyond what the organization would normally condone. Knowing the facility trafficked kids just like you and didn't care if some of them died.

The next room was bigger. It looked like it had been the main generator room once, but the massive transformers in the room were dead, rusty and mildewed. The ceiling was open here in several places. The cement floor was cracked. A few ferns were growing through it, but in the center of the room, a giant tree had grown up, breaking up a walkway overhead. It was as thick as Garrus and at least one of the others put together and stretched through the ceiling. Six meters high at least. On another world, it might have taken a tree like that a couple of centuries to grow so big, and it would have grown around the walkway. Here, it had grown fast enough to push the metal aside instead. Jack hadn't been exaggerating about the growth rate of the vegetation here.

Jack looked up at the tree. It was impossible to guess what she was thinking. "I remember escaping through this room," she said. "I saw sunlight through the cracks in the ceiling. Only a half-dead guard between me and freedom. He was begging for his life."

Garrus didn't bother asking what she had done. Neither did Shepard.

At first, there was no sound but the rain on the floor and on the leaves of the plants, coming through the leaks in the ceiling. Then, though, there was an unmistakable baying sound. Reaching past the bomber bag, Garrus drew his assault rifle, but Shepard's Locust rang out first.

The first varren skidded on the wet, broken floor, its bark cut off to a whimper. Face savaged and chest bloody from a hail of bullets, it left an ugly red smear behind as it slid to a halt. Jack got the second varren, tossing it up into the air for her shotgun. Garrus and Shepard took the third out together, but Garrus got the fourth himself, his shots all hitting in a tight spread in the varren's head, taking it out quickly and cleanly.

Shepard walked over to the corpses and nudged one bloody varren with the toe of her boot. "Varren aren't native, are they?" She glanced at Jack. "Did the guards here have any varren they left behind?"

Garrus saw a blue light behind Jack's dark eyes. She shook her head, her mouth a thin, hard line.

The conclusion was obvious. "So. We're not the only ones to come here. The question is, are the scavengers still home or not?"

No one answered, and they all kept their weapons out as they moved forward.

On the other side of the room, the space opened up. There were short, portable concrete walls set up in a rough, broken semicircle—scarring and old blood ground into the floor. This place had been wrecked in the years since Jack had left here, but the set up was still clear. Shepard's jaw set.

"This looks like an arena." It wasn't a question.

"That's right," Jack confirmed. "They used to stage fights here. Pit me against the other kids." She looked up at Shepard and grinned mirthlessly. "I loved it," she said, and her tone was a challenge. "Only time I was out of my cell."

She knew how Shepard would react to that, Garrus saw. Jack walked around without a shirt on and didn't bat an eye. She wore her past, the people she'd killed, and the places she'd been on her skin. She shoved the ugliest parts of herself out at the rest of the galaxy, daring them to be offended, hoping they would be offended. _Because if you walk around naked, it doesn't hurt for people to see it. So you're not really naked anymore._

Now, though, Jack had brought them here, and she was naked again. All her scars exposed and bleeding for him and Shepard to see. So Garrus held still, making use of years of drilling in military discipline to give nothing away, and if behind it he was furious that these bastards had fought children like dogs in this cold, lifeless concrete room, well. Jack already knew he was. She didn't have to see it too. It would just put her right back there, years ago, in a new and worse way.

Shepard walked around the broken circle, quiet. "Did other children die in these fights?" she asked finally.

Jack shrugged. Garrus read it as a _probably_. "I was a kid, filled with drugs," Jack told them. "I got shocked when I hesitated. Narcotics flooded my veins when I attacked."

Shepard paused and looked back at Jack. "They actually rewarded you for attacking?"

Jack stood taller. Her eyes glittered, and there was a sick, twisted expression he had seen before on her face. Now, though, there was a bitter, self-aware edge to it. _I don't know if that's better or worse_. "I still get warm feelings during a fight."

The people at this facility hadn't just messed with Jack's body, her biotics. They had messed with her mind. _Were they trying to condition a psychopathic killer, or did they just need a practical trial of the subjects' biotic combat abilities? They were children!_

Shepard summed it all up, succinctly. "What the hell was wrong with those people?"

Now Jack's eyes dropped. She shrugged again, turned away. "I don't know. Doesn't matter now."

Shepard was still trying to make sense of it, gazing back at the broken arena. "What were they studying?"

Jack took three paces away. "Hell if I know. Maybe that's how they got their kicks. I never understood anything that happened here."

Shepard followed her. "How often did they do this?"

Jack turned around to face her, arms across her chest. "I was in a cell my whole life," she said flatly. "Sometimes they took me out, filled me with drugs, other stuff. Time gets funny in a cell."

Garrus could see that every question Shepard asked, every expression of disgust and horror she let show on her face made Jack feel like more of a freak and a victim. _She's done some bad things, maybe a lot of bad things, and she's responsible for what she's done. But she was a kid, and she didn't deserve this. Still, she survived, and she is who she is. Better to let her live with it than force her to go through everything again knowing it was even worse than she remembered._

"There's no more here, Shepard," Garrus said quietly.

Shepard looked back at him. She didn't want to move on. What had happened here was wrong, in a deep, ugly way, and Shepard couldn't stand that it had happened in the first place, let alone that there was absolutely nothing they could do about it now. All this had happened years ago. There wasn't anyone they could arrest or hold accountable, even with Shepard's Spectre authority. The Illusive Man would deny or disavow anything they proved here, and Pragia fell outside Council jurisdiction anyway. Cerberus had probably planned it that way.

He saw Shepard make a face and swallow. Then she nodded. "Let's get moving."

"Hell yes," Jack muttered, walking away again.

As Garrus followed them, he couldn't help wonder what Shepard would do if one day they found out that some of the sick bastards that had worked here had survived Jack's escape. It was possible, if unlikely. Would Shepard think they were worth killing? With the crimes that had happened here unaccountable to any planetary or intersystem authority, years ago and forgotten by everyone but Jack, no legal recourse, would Shepard act like she had on Illium, facing down Nassana Dantius? If they took Jack with them, and someday they wound up face to face with one of the people who had signed off for crates full of starving and dead children bought and stolen from other worlds, who had drugged Jack and made her fight and injure other children, possibly fatally, would Shepard let Jack or Thane or anybody shoot them in the head? Or would it be like other times, when she let the guilty party go, to law enforcement that would slap them with some token charge, where they would be out after a fine or a few months' detainment? Could she do that with the scientists that had worked _here_?

Masochistic and stupid, he knew, to wonder. Pointless too. Everyone here had died. Even if they hadn't, the crew of the _Normandy SR-2_ was out of time to execute even Shepard's warped ideas of justice against anybody that wasn't the Collectors. In the long run, it didn't matter whether Jack got closure here or not. Only that she could work with the rest of them, commit everything she had to the mission. Only that Garrus and Shepard test out the bomb model before they went to blow up the Collectors.

In the next hallway, there was another dying terminal, another broken log. Jack paced up and down, but she let Shepard stop, reactivate the terminal, recover the data. A panicked man talked on the radio to a superior: "Security officer Zemki, Teltin facility. The subjects are out of their cells. They're tearing the place apart! Subject Zero is going to get loose. I need permission to terminate! I repeat: permission to terminate."

The recording played the answer: "All subjects besides Zero are expendable! Keep Jack alive!"

"Understood," the security officer had replied over the recording. "I'll begin the—"

It would have played more, but this time, Jack shut off the recording. "That's not right!" she told Shepard. She was pale, angry now. "I broke out when my guards disappeared. I started that riot!"

She was shaking. _It can't have been an accident_ , Garrus understood. _If you only got out because the other kids here started something, then you owe them something. If they would have killed every one of those kids before they killed you, you're not the victim you thought you were. Not in the same way, anyway._ It was almost the opposite side of the problem she had had by the arena, needing to remember the fights against the other kids as something she had enjoyed. Where the other kids were concerned, Jack needed to believe they had been her enemies. _She probably killed a lot of them, getting out, and she needs to feel she was right, that it was something she had to do. As hard as they tried, they didn't turn her into a psychopath here—not quite. But that's worse. She can't disassociate._

Shepard was gentle. "Things might have happened that you didn't see."

Jack's biotics flashed blue around her. "The other kids attacked me. The guards attacked me. The automated systems attacked me," she said through her teeth. "That doesn't leave lots of room for interpretation."

Garrus sighed. "By the time you got out, you were just another angry, desperate biotic kid in the chaos. I'll bet the other kids weren't thinking any clearer than you were. No time for anyone to check their targets or program discriminatory parameters into whatever defenses were here. Probably didn't matter what whoever was in charge said. You did what you had to. And they tried to do the same thing."

It didn't help. Jack glared at him, eyes flashing. Then she turned on her heel. "Whatever. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that we leave this place in flames. Let's go."

She trudged away, through another door. She stopped then, and Garrus almost ran into her. He smelled it before he saw it; the hall was darker here. Decaying, rancid meat and coagulating blood. He looked down and saw a dead varren on the top of a short staircase. It was cold, but the pool of blood around it was still wet. No insects had made their way inside the facility and found the corpse.

Jack was tense. "The people who brought the varren are still here. That's a fresh kill. This place is supposed to be empty."

Shepard signaled for them to go more quietly, and Garrus fell back so the three of them were moving in formation and he and Shepard were on Jack's flanks. They kept moving into the facility, past what must have been offices and quarters for the scientists that had worked here. The emergency lights flickered, weak and sickly-looking. Water spattered on concrete and metal. And somewhere, someone was still here.

They found them in the next room they came to. Jack opened a door. A vorcha screamed a challenge, and a flamethrower roared. Jack had up her barrier in a second. Shepard winked out beside Garrus, and he flipped on his thermal imaging to track her at the same time that he dived to the ground and up behind the first cover available—a solid, medical table. An autopsy table.

Behind the attacking vorcha, Garrus saw drawers, refrigerator units. _Morgue._

 _As far as places to fight go, I can't decide if that's horrible or funny._

The vorcha were organized—guns and armor that he recognized. _Blood Pack._ They'd brought the varren. Killed one. And now they were trying to take out people they saw as competing scavengers on this job.

Garrus logged positions. There were three to his right and up ahead, near the end of the room. One more in front of him. Two flamethrowers. The rest with assault rifles. Close quarters. _This is going to get ugly_.

Bullets pinged off the metal exam table in front of him. Then the vorcha attacking him started to melt. The skin peeling back over his skull as Jack tore the atoms that made him up apart. He screamed in rage and agony, but he wasn't dying. His cells were already adapting to the attack, strengthening, arranging in different ways. Garrus shot him. Once. Twice. Three times. He fell.

Jack took cover behind some empty boxes—caskets—across from Garrus. _At least I hope they're empty._ Shepard's Widow cracked out, and the tank on a flamethrower at the end of the room exploded, engulfing two vorcha in the resulting inferno. Shepard followed it up with an incendiary, spreading the blaze to the remaining vorcha.

But at the same time, a glass wall that had sealed off more refrigerator units shattered. Three more vorcha opened fire. Garrus ducked. Jack cursed. Bullets flew in wide arcs, left to right. Inefficient and imprecise, but wickedly effective. Garrus was pinned down. Jack too.

Through his visor, Garrus could see Shepard, staying low, under the spread of the gunfire. He saw her silhouette plant a hand on the sill of the broken window, vault up onto the higher step, behind one of the vorcha firing. Line up a shot.

She fired, and at that moment, Garrus yelled, "Now!" As the two surviving vorcha turned, snarling, to address the new threat, Garrus and Jack stepped out from cover and put them down.

When they came back together in the center of the room, Jack was bleeding. Shepard glanced sharply at her. "Are you wounded?"

Jack rolled her eyes. "It's nothing. The glass, not a fucking bullet." She examined the bleeding slice down her forearm with disgust. "I got sloppy. Didn't account for the slower trajectory with my barriers. I won't screw up again." She stalked away. Garrus wanted to point out that armor might help stop projectiles, but somehow, he didn't think Jack would take a review of her dress code well just now.

 _Anyway, she couldn't show off the ink if she started actually dressing for combat._

"Why the hell did they need a morgue?" Jack muttered, almost to herself, looking at the stacked coffins and body bags, the autopsy tables, and the refrigeration units. "This was a small facility."

Garrus looked at her. By now, he had a good idea of what had happened here. Jack wasn't just a Cerberus experiment from this facility, she was _the_ Cerberus experiment from this facility, the culmination of every atrocity that had been committed here in the name of research. But she was still in denial. "I'm saying some sick son of a bitch killed a lot of kids with these 'experiments'," he answered her, even though he knew she hadn't been expecting an answer. "And then checked his work."

His plates itched as Jack's biotics flared. "Bullshit!" she snapped, eyes crackling blue. "I had the worst of it, and I made it out alive."

Shepard was there then, in between the two of them. She didn't say anything. Just looked at Jack. Jack's biotics subsided, and she turned away. "Feels so strange to be back here," she muttered. "I feel like—I'm pissed off. I'm a dangerous bitch, but then I'm a little girl again! Shit. It's complicated. Let's just go plant that bomb."

She hoisted her shotgun in her arms and walked to the exit. Her combat boots crunched over the glass. "Was that almost an apology?" Garrus asked in an undertone.

"An excuse," Shepard corrected in the same, quiet voice. "But she wanted it to do the same thing."

Garrus hummed and fell into line behind Jack again. He felt like he should be honored by Jack's halfhearted attempt to smooth things over—she was under a lot of strain here—but instead, for some reason, he was annoyed. When they had first met, Jack would have just as soon kicked him in the teeth as looked at him. She wasn't different now because the two of them had gotten so close on the tour. _Shepard's_ changing _her. Trying to save her like she tries to save everyone._

 _I know I'm an arrogant bastard, but I don't try to_ change _people like you do, Shepard. I think I know who's right and wrong. I punish them or let them go, and maybe Dad's right, you're right, and outside of any written law, I have no right to do that. Maybe when I see justice gets done, no matter what, because somebody has to do it, I stop being just. Fine._

 _But when I'm out there, deciding who's right and wrong, I don't try to_ make _people live up to my idea of right._ That was what Shepard's dismissal of Jack's excuse was. She did have a point— _don't lie, don't hide, and don't make excuses. Only cowards don't take responsibility for their actions. Courage is owning what you do, good or bad, and when you're wrong, admitting it. But it's not Shepard's job to get Jack to live that way._

 _I don't make choices for people, Shepard. I don't_ push _like you do, force them to head the way I think they should, deliberately put them in situations that encourage it. I don't get in their heads until they doubt everything they believe and everything they are, and everything looks different. I'm an arrogant bastard. But not as arrogant as you are._

Garrus stopped himself, angry. _This isn't about you, and it's not about Shepard. Keep the focus on Jack, on the bomb, and on whatever Blood Pack is still hanging around._

Damn, he'd needed those two days Lawson had offered him. _Should have taken them when I had the chance._

The facility went down and down, further into a hill in the jungle. Jack led them into a long, dark hallway. Institutional. Two stories deep. Garrus only just made out cells on either side of both floors when the vorcha stood up from behind the railing of a bridge that crossed over the top level.

Garrus reacted at the same time Jack did. Her biotics ignited, and he fired. Red blood showered down black in the dim corridor, spattering on the tile floor beneath the bridge, and Garrus's target slumped over the side of the balcony. Jack's target floated off the bridge, screaming, helpless to fire his assault gun in the grip of the energy field Jack squeezed around him. Calmly, unhurried, Shepard raised her Locust, aimed, and fired a three-shot pulse. The vorcha stopped screaming, and Jack let him fall, so the blood didn't fall over the entire length of the corridor.

The hallway they were in went down to the ground floor, and as Jack led Garrus and Shepard down it, Garrus activated the lamp on his rifle. The emergency lighting was down in this part of the facility—or it had never been installed. There were no skylights or windows here, nothing to break up the blackness in the corridor—just the cells on either side.

Garrus felt cold. He shone his lamp into one cell, then another. They were identical—tiny prisons. The ceilings inside loomed too low for comfort—Garrus wasn't sure he would be able to stand up in one—but into each cell was crammed a metal-frame, institutional bunk bed. There were no sheets on the mattresses, though the beds were positioned as they had to have been the day Jack had escaped, some pushed over to barricade a door or flipped for cover. There were old, dark bloodstains and bullet holes on and around some of the mattresses and denting the bed frames.

The open floor in each cell wasn't big enough for one child, let alone two. There was a single toilet and a single sink in each cell. No privacy curtains. No showers, and no communal shower anywhere to be seen. No closets, no games. Just cold, dark, empty cells like in a prison. _And a prison any decent government would shut down._

"They kept children here?" The fury came through under his voice without his quite intending it. The light from Garrus's lamp caught Shepard's eyes, flashing toward him. She was starting to hear it, now, when he lost control, learning to read subharmonics like he had had to learn to read human faces, back in the day. He didn't know how much she understood, yet, but right now, anything was too much. He glanced at Jack, and so did Shepard.

Something flickered across Shepard's face, and she didn't answer him. Neither did Jack, and Garrus didn't say anything else as they passed through the children's dormitory, into a sort of indoor courtyard or exercise area.

There was a skylight here. More leaks in the ceiling. More plants, breaking up the stifling darkness of the dormitory corridor, but Jack didn't pay attention to any of that. Her gaze was riveted on the metallic back wall of the room. Her mouth was open, her expression stricken.

"This—it's a two-way mirror?" she whispered. She walked across the room and laid her hand on the reflective wall. Garrus looked in and saw three warped, tarnished reflections. The reflections were only vaguely recognizable as two humans and a turian. The distorted, discolored surface of the mirror and the weak, gray light filtered through the skylight and the cracks in the ceiling left Shepard's features as blurred as Garrus's and Jack's elaborate tattoos swirls of meaningless color.

"My cell is on the other side," Jack told them both, her voice small, and for once, sounding very young. "I could see all the other kids out here. I screamed at them for hours, and they always ignored me."

Garrus and Shepard both looked at her again and chose to say nothing. It was a purposely cruel design, again meant to put Jack at odds with the other children in the facility, to make sure she _wanted_ to fight them.

Jack looked shattered. She'd never seen this. She had never realized the other children hadn't deliberately ignored her. She turned away mechanically, and walked, more slowly, to the left, through the next door.

They had been through the transformer room, the offices, the dormitories. This next room had clearly been where the doctors had operated. There were two stations, separated by a dirty glass divider. Medical chairs, with restraints, standing stark under what had probably once been two groups of bright lights. Tables of surgical tools still stood by the chairs. Dead consoles that would have held the medical readings.

Jack flinched away from the chairs. She shrank in on herself, fingers tightening on the stock of her shotgun. "I must have come through here when I broke out, but I don't remember it," she said quietly. "This is a bad place."

Shepard stepped up to stand beside Jack, supporting her. She nodded at a flickering floor terminal on one side. Like the others they had seen earlier, this one still had some life in it. A data log maybe. Shepard gestured for Garrus to see what he could find.

He had the log playing in a moment. "Entry 1054 Teltin Facility," a scientist reported in a flat, dispassionate voice. "The latest iteration of PergNim went poorly. Subjects One, Four, and Six died. No biotic change among the survivors. We lowered core temperatures of surviving subjects, but no biotically beneficial reactions occurred. As a side effect, all subjects died, so we'll not try that on Zero. I hope our supply of biotic potential subjects holds up. We are going through them fast."

The log went dark, and the terminal flickered and died, any energy it had left to run exhausted. And Jack exploded. She threw her hands up. "This is bullshit! They weren't experimenting on the other children for my safety!"

"You can't help what they did to others," Shepard said calmly.

Jack looked down at her boots. She was shaking. "You don't get it, Shepard," she said. "I survived this place because I was tougher than the rest. That's who I am."

"So tough this out," Shepard suggested. "Sometimes the hardest thing to face is the truth."

Jack frowned but didn't say anything. She didn't move either, and so Shepard took the lead now, walking over to the other side, where there was another terminal and another log.

This time, the scientist who came up on the holo was like the soldier who had asked for permission to terminate the subjects. "It's all fallen to pieces," he spoke into the camera. His voice was high. Panicked. "The subjects are rampaging, and Zero is loose. We're shutting Teltin down. What a disaster! We'll infiltrate and piggyback onto the Alliance's Ascension program. Hopefully, that will give—what? Zero, wait!" His holographic body fell out of frame in a staticky crash of blood and biotics.

Jack turned to Shepard, desperate. "Shepard, they started up somewhere else!"

Shepard shook her head. "Ascension is an Alliance program," she told Jack. "It's a school for biotic kids. They don't torture children there." There was still a grim light in the back of her eyes. Maybe there weren't any kids being tortured at Ascension, but if any of the other scientists had left here to go there, the Alliance's biotic school had Cerberus infiltrators—people who _had_ trafficked and tortured children. Garrus guessed Anderson would be getting an encrypted warning right after they got back to the Normandy. _Probably Admiral Hackett too, and anyone else she still knows._

Jack shifted. She looked sideways at Garrus. "A lot of this . . . isn't the way I remember it."

"You were a kid," Garrus said. "On drugs, purposely kept in an environment that gave you a warped idea of your situation, in the middle of a crisis."

Jack shook her head, refusing to accept his excuse for her now. "I was dumb," she growled. "I keep my eyes open now, and I always shoot first." She pointed toward the next room. "We're getting close to my cell. The place I came from. Let's keep going."

Garrus wondered where Jack had actually come from. Had she been trafficked here like the others or brought earlier? Was she actually the kid of some twisted Cerberus scientist? Who had her parents been? Had they sold her or been killed? _If you didn't grow up Subject Zero, Jack, who would you have been?_ He tried to imagine it, but everything he associated with Jack, from the hostility to the reckless bravery, was probably the result of this place—of years of trauma and abuse, of being hunted, unable to trust anyone. As horrible as it was, this hellhole _was_ Jack's parent.

Destroying it could be a kind of baptism for her, maybe. Symbolically at least. Maybe it was what she needed to be a different person, separate from what Cerberus had made her.

But the rest of the Blood Pack scavengers were waiting in the next room—what had probably once been an observational center and data bank for the Teltin scientists. None of them fired, though, and Garrus did a quick head count. Ten. Two varren, five vorcha, three krogan, in a pretty open space, though the old cubicles in the room would offer some cover.

One of the krogan had a silver hood over his hump instead of the standard red one. He raised his hand to his ear and spoke into a radio. "Hey, Aresh," he growled. "It's Kureck." He was quiet a moment. Nobody fired. "Yeah. The intruders are here. You want them dead? We have to talk creds. You promised us lots of salvage, but this place is a waste." He was silent another moment, and Garrus wondered if the gang would just leave without a fight. But then Kureck raised his other hand, signaling the other two krogan and the vorcha. Suddenly, all the Blood Pack guns were on them. "Fine. We'll put 'em down. Then I'm coming in there, and we're gonna talk salvage."

He dropped his hand and faced them down. "What are you doing here?" Shepard called, trying to talk him back down.

But this guy was a professional. Not too personally involved in killing them, really, but now he had his orders. "First, we're going to kill you," he said. "Then, we'll see."

"Keep moving," Shepard shouted. "Don't get pinned down!"

"No shit!" Jack yelled back. Her barrier blazed around her, and she vaulted over a cubicle wall, shooting a charging varren. It yelped as its vorcha handler roared. Garrus went the other way, toward another cubicle, controlling his lines so the krogan in the back of the room couldn't shoot at him without hitting their own people. He heard an exploding flamethrower fuel tank, smelled burning flesh and bone.

"Concentrate fire, idiots!" Kureck yelled. "Take them out one at a time!"

Inside the cubicle, safe for another second and a half, maybe, Garrus had time enough to shoot one of the vorcha. One less in between him and the krogan. Overhead, the second varren floated in a nimbus of dark energy, steaming guts spilling out of a shotgun hole in its side, red tongue lolling out of its mouth under sightless eyes.

"AAARGGHH!" A krogan roared. Shepard's Locust chirped out to Garrus's right. Garrus sent out an electric pulse in the direction of the roaring, taking out the krogan's shields. He heard the roar change tone and register, becoming pained and guttural before stopping.

Two more vorcha were circling around, trying to corner him. Garrus seized the stinking, dirty thing around torso and throat, pulling its body to him and firing up into the jaw. He held the corpse in front of him, shielding him a few extra seconds as he moved back across the room, toward Jack's position, firing at the second vorcha all the way.

Jack backed him up. The second vorcha fell, and Garrus let the corpse of the first one fall. Garrus stood back to back with Jack, facing off with the last vorcha, Kureck, and his last krogan soldier. Shepard stood on the other side of the room, near the vorcha. His jaw had gone slack, and he was trying to back away now, thrusting his pistol in front of him.

"No," he snarled. "No good. No—"

He fired. So did Shepard. The last vorcha went down, several of his long, needle-like teeth knocked back into his mouth in the spread of Shepard's fire.

Kureck's krogan fixated on her, eyes narrowing in rage. He screamed a wordless challenge and charged. Shepard just vanished, and through his visor, Garrus saw her simply step aside, flanking the krogan to move into position to attack Kureck, still stationed in the rear of the room.

In a violent thrust downward with the palm of her hand, Jack sent a shockwave barreling toward the krogan charging at the place where Shepard had been. "I can't see," he yelled at Kureck. Then he fell, knocked off his feet by Jack's attack. Garrus fired with Jack. It took them a few shots each to take him down, but they did it before he could come at them.

"Right," Kureck grit out. "Who the hell are you people?" He lit up violet—he was biotic. But Jack's barrier flared to cover Garrus for a moment, thrusting his attack to the side. Garrus and Jack split up, moving in different directions. Garrus moved toward the right flank. Jack went up the center, charging straight at him, wreathed in blue and warping the air half a meter all around her, and Kureck forgot all about Garrus and Shepard.

There Shepard was, in perfect position on Kureck's other flank, her Locust exchanged for her heavy pistol. Her tactical cloak timed out. Kureck realized what had happened right before they hit him. He was dead before Jack got there, caught in the crossfire Garrus had set up with Shepard.

Jack's biotics dissipated, and she glared at them both. "I was _right there_ ," she complained. "I don't know why I go anywhere with you. My mission, and you couldn't let me have the bad guy. Typical."

"He's not the bad guy," Shepard said, looking down at the remains of Kureck's head. "He was in charge of the bad guy's scavenger team." She looked back up and around at the wrecked, empty facility. "Why would they come here?" she wondered aloud. "How would they even know about it?"

Jack shrugged. "Don't know. But there's no good reason to come here. The only room left is my old cell. Whoever Aresh is, he's in there." She turned her gun over in her hand. "I want to plant the bomb there anyway. Might as well do it on his corpse."

With that, she turned around and started toward the only closed door left in the place. Garrus and Shepard looked at one another, and followed.

* * *

 **A/N: Have a chapter. A nice, big, thick one. Oddly, I had almost the entirety of the following chapter written before this one. I still have to finalize its beginning, but you'll get it very shortly. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten nearly as much written on the chapters after** _ **that**_ **. Bear with me. We'll get it done!**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMS**


	36. The Well of Urd: Odin's Answer

**A/N: In Norse mythology, when Odin the Allfather asked Mimir, guardian of the Well of Urd (or the Well of Destiny), to drink of its waters and thus be granted the wisdom it could impart, Mimir demanded Odin sacrifice one eye for the honor. Without hesitation, Odin plucked his eye out and cast it into the well, and thus is Odin Allfather, wisest of all the gods, ever represented as one-eyed.**

* * *

XXXVI

The Well of Urd: Odin's Answer

Jack's cell was large, but it was as damp and depressing as the rest of the facility. The two-way mirror—here a window out to the commons—was dirty and mildewed. It was impossible to ignore the restraint cuffs hanging on chains on the small bed in the corner.

Their bad guy had hidden in the only hiding spot in the room, under a desk in another corner, on the left near the door. All three of them had their guns on it in a second.

Shepard spoke, voice cold and steady. "Come out. We know you're here."

Two hands appeared over the edge of the desk—human. Unarmed. A small man unfolded himself from behind the desk and stepped out slowly. From the way he moved and from his thick crop of still-natural-looking dark hair—which, without cosmetic solutions, grew thinner and grayer as human males aged—Garrus guessed he was young, maybe midtwenties. Only a couple years older than Jack. But there were fine wrinkles over his forehead and around his mouth, and his sunken eyes made him look older. He looked thin and underfed, and under his rolled-up sleeves, Garrus spotted the track marks of the addict. And older, surgical scars—similar to Jack's.

Jack's jaw tightened at the sight of him. "Who are you?"

The man's hollow, glassy dark eyes raked over Jack's face. "My name is Aresh, and you're breaking into my home." His voice was flat and expressionless. He had just ordered thugs to kill them, he was unarmed in front of three professionals, but he didn't look afraid. Garrus's spine tingled. The only reason an unarmed man like this wouldn't be afraid of three armed intruders was if he wasn't in his right mind—or if he himself didn't have to rely on arms. He looked like he was on something—the bloodshot eyes and contracted pupils, the slow response time and slightly slurred voice, but behind the man's ear, Garrus saw scarring from a biotic implant too. As the man regarded Jack, a flicker of recognition lit in his face. "I know you, Subject Zero," he said slowly. Jack stiffened all over. "So many years have passed, and I thought I was the only survivor."

Jack's hands trembled on her pistol. "My name is Jack. How the hell do you know me?"

The first trace of an expression crossed the man's face—something like disgust. He turned away. "We all knew your face, Jack. They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn't kill you." He looked out over the dead facility beyond the two-way mirror. "You were the question, and I'm still looking for the answer."

Shepard lowered her gun, and Garrus followed suit. Not all the way, but some. This guy wasn't aggressive. Crazy, maybe. Strung out, probably. But now he knew who they were, he wasn't going to attack. "Looks like you're not the only one pulled back here, Jack," Shepard said.

Aresh shrugged. "I tried to forget this," he told Shepard, "but a place like this—it doesn't forget you. It follows you. I hired these mercs and came back almost a solar year ago. We're rebuilding it piece by piece. I'm gonna find out what they knew—how to unlock true biotic potential in humans. I'm restarting the Teltin facility. It will be beautiful."

Biotics rippled over Jack's skin. She turned to Shepard, furious. "I wanted a hole in the ground! He's trying to justify what happened by using it?" she demanded.

It was hard to believe, Garrus thought. The trafficking, the torture, the forced surgeries and child-fighting. This guy had made it out of a nightmare and wanted to bring it right back to life? "You'd do the same thing to new kids?" Shepard asked Aresh. "Wasn't this forced on you?"

Aresh shrugged again. "Some were bought from poor families on Earth or kidnapped from colonies. Most ended up here the way I did: batarian pirates." His eyes were vacant, unseeing. "They did such horrible things to us. They must have had good reasons."

Jack stepped closer, commanding his attention again. "There's no reason good enough!" she yelled. "Are you nuts? You lived it!"

Shepard stepped closer too, focusing on Aresh. "This place was like a prison. How did you get out?"

Aresh faced her again. "We all attacked at once as they were taking us to the lab," he answered. "They would have put us all down, but then Jack got loose." He turned to Jack. He didn't look angry, but he didn't excuse her either. "When I came to, it was over. The guards, the scientists, and the kids were all dead. And you were gone."

Jack moved a new clip into position, readying a shot. Aresh didn't so much as blink. He was out of it, a shell of a man. _This is insanity. That dead, sluggish apathy when someone points a gun at your head. This guy doesn't care if he lives or dies. Maybe he even wanted to die that day._

"I stopped it, all of it!" Jack told him. "Maybe the others did have it bad, but what you're doing is just messed!"

That got him. Something in his eyes snapped, and his fists clenched. A crackle of biotics ran over his skin too. Garrus raised his gun again. "Everything we went through must have been worth _something_!" Aresh insisted.

Jack's arms were taut. She hesitated. Shepard stepped in. "We've got your bomb," she said. "We can blow this place, but that still leaves him. What are you going to do, Jack?"

"That's easy," Jack snarled.

But Aresh had checked out again. "Just leave me here," he said. "This is where I belong."

Jack made a wordless sound of scorn. Her biotics flared. "Fuck that!" Aresh was thrown back a meter and a half, down to his knees. He blinked, and looked up at Jack, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, but he didn't fight back. Just stared.

Jack was shaking. But Shepard stepped up.

 _Of course_.

"Dead or alive, Jack, he's always going to be here," she said. "That going to be you too?"

There was a sour taste in Garrus's mouth. This idiot junkie didn't deserve a bullet. He knew that. _But you just can't leave it there, can you, Shepard?_ The arrogance of her, just assuming she knew how everyone else should think and act, hit him again. Garrus swallowed hard and looked away.

Jack was listening. _Just like we all do._ "He wants to restart this place. He needs to die!" She was arguing, but she was also hesitating. Every line of her body said she wasn't sure about this.

Shepard had already won. She had to see that as clearly as he did, but she kept going. "And how the hell is he going to do that, huh? We killed his mercs, and they weren't satisfied anymore anyway. He's obviously insane. He's never going to restart this facility. You don't have to kill him."

Jack's gun started to lower.

"You listen to me," Shepard said. "Everyone has their own shit to sort through. You more than most. Fine. That's not fair, and it sucks. I get it. But in the end, you've got to make the same choice everyone else in the galaxy makes, Jack: will you take charge, or will you continue to let your past own you? You keep looking for all the assholes that experimented on you, used you, that's all you're ever going to find, and you won't ever see what's really in front of you." Her hand swung out at Aresh, drawing the parallel again just in case Jack had been stupid enough to miss it the first time.

Garrus shook his head. "You keep reacting to the past," Shepard said, "and blowing this place to hell won't do shit: you will always be here, just like this bastard. You've got a chance for something better, to screw them all over and be your own person, be the one you wish you'd known then."

Jack flared again. "I never saw—"she snapped.

Shepard cut her off. "Don't tell me you never! You know what's right. It doesn't matter that you've never seen it; you're so damn angry because you know how you should've been treated, how the galaxy shouldwork. So you weren't. Fuck that! Be what you wanted to see! You're strong, smart _,_ so much better than you've been. Choose now: who are you going to be? Do you have the balls to let go, or not?"

She stepped back from Jack, breathing hard, and folded her arms, waiting. Garrus watched her. _Damn you, Shepard. Save Aresh, but what Jack takes away from it is_ none _of your business._

Jack hesitated one more second, but Shepard had her. "Fuck!" she exploded finally. She glared at Aresh. "Get out of here. Go!"

For a second, Aresh just kept looking at Jack, then he nodded once and bolted. Garrus heard him trip over his feet, stumble, and keep running without missing a beat.

Jack looked down at the pistol in her hand, turning it over and over. Her face was tight and thoughtful.

Shepard turned to signal him to start prepping the bomb. When she saw his face, her eyes narrowed. Garrus stiffened and matched her stare for stare. Shepard pressed her lips together. She arched an eyebrow.

Garrus slung the bomber bag down off his shoulder and began bringing out the ordnance. As Jack walked Shepard around the cell, telling her about the bed, the desk, an old bloodstain on the wall just outside, he connected the wires and started activating the ignition sequence.

Garrus tried to focus on the bomb, on how the wires fit together and the switches and dials to press to program detonation. _You're not in charge anymore, and that's for the best. Just do your job. Next time you're doing this there might be Collectors shooting at you._

But as he programmed the bomb to respond to remote detonation, stood, and handed the detonator off to Jack, Garrus couldn't pretend anger wasn't coiling in his gut, and the question he'd tried to stuff down for days wasn't burning like acid in his brain.

 _Why can't you just_ leave _it, Shepard?_

* * *

Garrus watched Pragia fall away on the display. Across the shuttle, he could feel Jack changing, the mental reconfiguration happening inside her skull as she reevaluated everything she'd thought she'd known about her past and who she was. Over the months they'd been working together, Jack had gone from the most feral, antisocial convict he'd known to something like a soldier.

 _On a good day. When she feels like it. Sometimes she even wears a shirt._

He'd seen her fall into a gradual, reluctant enjoyment of life on the _Normandy_ , working on a team—first of the violence of it, then, increasingly, of having people she could count on, and, maybe more importantly, people that were counting on her. She'd even developed a sort of camaraderie—albeit a cautious and extremely abrasive one—with certain members of the team. Tali. Grunt. Joker. _Me._

If she survived the relay run, Garrus could see Jack's life taking a pretty different path from what he would have predicted when she'd joined the team.

 _I should be happy about that._

Instead, as illogical as it was, Garrus felt so angry he was literally sick—fighting waves of nausea and a headache. He didn't try to speak as they waited for the _Normandy_ to come around and pick them up out of orbit. The force of everything he wanted to say but couldn't—not here—choked him.

Jack broke the silence first. She'd been staring at the wall of the shuttle. She jerked her head at Shepard without looking at her to open the conversation. "So what's your shit?"

Garrus glanced up at Jack. _Good luck._ Jack hadn't been the first to ask, and she wouldn't be the last. But he could count on one of _his_ hands the number of times he'd heard Shepard talk about her past.

She didn't break her pattern here. "Doesn't matter," she said. "I had to move past it, same as anyone."

Jack looked at Shepard. After a moment, she nodded. "Did you mean all that stuff you said back there?" she asked then. "That I can—"she broke off. "Shit. I'm no good at this—"

Shepard cut her off. "Yes. I meant it. You can be whatever you want to be."

 _So long as it's Shepard-approved_. Garrus didn't realize he'd snorted aloud until he saw Shepard tense. She didn't look at him.

"You proved it back there," she told Jack. "I never thought I'd see you show mercy."

Jack shrugged. "He was trapped in the past. Reliving it every day. You showed how that could be me. I'm not getting stuck like that. I'm better than him, and I'm sure as hell not carrying that crater around with me." She tossed her head.

 _For better or worse, Shepard_ has _her._ He might have been looking in a mirror— _a warped, tarnished one, anyway_ —two years ago after hitting the Herschel system.

 _It's probably better._

 _I still don't like it._

"Good," Shepard said to Jack. "Don't. Leave it there. Moments like that can change you, but only if you let them and keep moving forward. Do you feel different now?"

Garrus scoffed. _Because she wasn't fine how she was before._

 _. . ._

 _Well she wasn't._

 _Shut up._

Jack glanced at him this time. Her eyes narrowed before she looked back at Shepard. "I know that place is gone. But I still kind of want to kill every person I see. No offense."

Garrus tipped his head ironically at her. She smirked. The shuttle beeped as it came into proximity with the _Normandy_ , slowed and adjusted as Niels brought them into line with the frigate's relative speed and then set down on the cargo bay floor.

The shuttle door opened. Jack swung up out of her seat and left. Garrus left after Shepard. "I'll take what I can get, Jack," Shepard was saying. "It's not like things are going to get easier for you overnight. You know that."

Jack was standing by the side of the shuttle, hands in her pockets. "Yeah. But still," she muttered, eyes on Garrus's boots. "You did a lot. I . . . I owe you one, Shepard. Let's just—leave it at that. Get back to work. If it doesn't kill us all."

"We can't go pirate queen if it does." Shepard said.

It sounded like an inside joke between them, and Jack grinned. "Shit, do you know how we could tear it up?" She raised a hand and turned to leave. "Later, Shepard."

Garrus started after her. They were done here. But Shepard's boots sounded at time-and-a-half behind him, then she was standing in front of him, arms crossed over her chest and chin raised. "Problem?" she asked. Her voice was low.

Niels had exited the cockpit of the shuttle. He started to say something and saw the two of them squared off. He raised his eyebrows.

Garrus waved his hand at Shepard. "You handle things the way you want, Shepard. You always do."

Shepard made a sharp gesture of dismissal at Niels. The shuttle pilot nodded and hurried away. "If you've got a problem, say so, Garrus," Shepard said. She paused. "You finally ready to talk about it?"

He wasn't angry at Shepard for what had gone down on Pragia. He knew it. She knew it. This wasn't about that, or about how Shepard was developing Jack.

Garrus flexed his hands. "What's to talk about?" he asked. "You did the same thing with Sidonis you always do, and you just did it again down on Pragia. It doesn't matter what anyone else wants, you butt in and you make sure they handle it the way _you_ think it should be handled."

Shepard's eyes flashed. "Damn right I do. If I see someone about to make a bad decision and I can stop it, you bet your ass I'm going to stop it. Jack didn't need to kill Aresh on Pragia; _you_ didn't need to kill Sidonis on the Citadel."

"You think he deserved to live?" Garrus demanded. He may have accepted that he needed to focus on the Collectors, on the Reapers now, but every unresolved question he'd had turning over in his head for three days were screaming at him. Sidonis still breathing somewhere was a violation of everything he'd ever believed. He had to know if Shepard thought _that_ was justice. But more than that, he had to know _why she had stopped him_.

She turned her back on him and stalked away. Garrus went after her.

 _She doesn't get to walk away from this. Not when she asked to talk._

When she stopped at the table in the bay where she kept her exercise materials, he realized she had no intention of walking away. She stripped off both her gauntlets.

Everything about her came into laser focus. She grabbed a tight roll of cloth for hand wraps and started working. "No, I don't," she said.

Garrus blinked. _She thought he deserved to die too?_ A fresh wave of rage swept over him. Before he could protest, Shepard cut him off. "All I knew was it'd be wrong for _you_ to kill him."

She finished wrapping her hands and tossed the wrap at him. Garrus snatched it out of the air. He didn't know how the hell she'd understood a challenge he hadn't even realized he was making, but he wasn't about to complain. He stripped off his gauntlets and started wrapping his hands.

Shepard started unbuckling her plate armor and stacking it under the table. It was both too protective for hand-to-hand sparring and an unfair offensive advantage if they didn't actually want to kill one another.

Right now he wasn't too sure about that, but when Garrus finished with the hand wrap, he followed her example. "Who else, Shepard?" he asked her, lifting his breastplate off and sliding it beside hers on the floor. "If not me, then who?" It could have been her, he thought. _But spirits forbid Shepard ever get her hands dirty shooting someone in the head off the battlefield._ "Ten good men died because of him, and because you stuck your nose in, he walked!"

He stepped out of his boots and kicked them aside and met her in the center of the cargo bay. Her tight-woven, black underarmor wasn't too different from the bodysuits she'd worn on the _SR-1_ , before Cerberus had fitted her out with better tech. Outside of plate armor, she was so small. But he knew better than to sell her short. Human N7s were the equals of any special operative in the galaxy. Even before the Cerberus upgrades, Shepard had had some of the best reflexes he'd ever seen. He'd watched her take on krogan warlords and asari commandos and win. He'd never fought her before. He'd never wanted to before. But part of him _had_ always wanted to know how he'd do.

Shepard cocked an eyebrow at him, like she knew. Then she was at him, moving fast. "And so did you," she told him. "You walked out of the markets that day, and you don't have to live with the knowledge that you killed the guy that was your friend once!"

As she came toward him, Garrus didn't know what made him angrier—that Shepard thought she had the right to decide what he could and couldn't deal with or the fact that she was just playing with him. Obvious, basic punches to body and face. Prebasic stuff; he hardly had to move to block her. Her technique was perfect, of course, but he could feel her holding back, reining her power in.

She was fighting him like some twelve-year-old kid she was training! He blocked her latest joke of a punch—a body shot at his ribs—and sent her arm flying. As her momentum brought her in close, before she could recover, he'd countered with a hard, fast uppercut toward her unprotected jaw. Her eyes widened, and she pivoted on her left foot, swiveling away before the blow landed.

"It wasn't your call to make!" Garrus growled at her, following up with a low strike at her liver. That did it. Using all the speed she brought to bear in battle, her hand shot forward to seize his wrist midstrike in a grip like iron.

Rotating his wrist free was reflex. Garrus seized the inside of her forearm, grabbing her elbow with his other hand to force her arm behind her back. The lock was C-Sec to the core, but a good one, and Shepard hissed in pain.

Still, Shepard was no petty perp. Her legs and other arm were still free, and she made use of it. She kicked back hard with her right. Her kick landed squarely at the intersection of his spur and shin. Garrus staggered as sharp pain shot up his leg. Then he saw her left elbow coming up under his ribs.

He released her immediately, leaping back out of range. He stared at Shepard. He could almost hear the alarm any turian ref would've pulled. If that elbow strike had landed hard enough, at just the right trajectory, she could've killed him. Strikes up under the rib cage were banned in ordinary sparring, though they were taught in all the self-defense classes. Abruptly it occurred to him how alone they were. No ref in sight, probably nobody on the whole ship even qualified to supervise a fight between the two of them.

The silence of the shuttle bay seemed to echo and expand. In the corner of his visor, Garrus saw Shepard's heart rate pulsing—133 beats per minute—too high, considering they'd been fighting two minutes and she wasn't even sweating. Her eyes were shining. She spread her arms wide, a clear _come on._ "You asked for my help," she challenged him. "It's not like you needed it. You're the fucking Archangel. You could've tracked Sidonis down all on your own. I would've given you leave. But no—you asked me to be there. You sent me to talk to him. How well do you know me? What the hell did you expect?"

Garrus shook his head at her, and she charged, thrusting her palm forward toward his nose. Garrus pivoted as she had done earlier. It was a ploy, conditioning her to expect another wrist grab, and when she fell for it, he struck in the second she left her torso unguarded. She gasped, choked, but she was already rebounding, leaning back on her heels.

Her gelled and pinned head hit him full in the face when she jumped. Venomous pain snapped through his nose. Garrus's teeth sliced into his tongue, and white spots danced through his field of vision. Garrus spat blood, only to see Shepard reeling back, too, clutching her head. "Shit!" she yelled.

 _Always with the headbutts, Shepard._ Recovering, Garrus tackled her. Her back hit the floor. But then her arms were locked around his left arm, forcing it up and in. She hooked her leg over his and thrust her hips up hard, and before he could blink, she'd flipped him over on _his_ back hard enough to force him to breathe out. The tip of his fringe hit, too, and the jolt as they bent back made him wince.

Shepard was straddling him, glaring down at him with eyes like a storm, panting, lips parted. "What did you want?" she demanded. "Your Spectre buddy to clean up the murder you were planning to commit on the Citadel?"

He could feel her thighs taut and hard on either side of him. Her forearm roved over his chest, searching for a hold. A growl ripped through Garrus's throat. A hot knot tightened in the pit of his stomach. His blood burned, racing south fast. It just made him angrier. He didn't have time for this!

Shepard tried to punch him, but her left hand fumbled on his chest, unable to find a good hold. Garrus caught her right fist, elbowed her in the side with his other arm. She grunted. Her limbs loosened reflexively, and he rolled her back over, catching both her hands this time.

It had crossed his mind—that she could use her Spectre status to uphold justice where the law just wasn't good enough. Of her own volition. If C-Sec had somehow gotten good enough to catch him— _which was never very likely_. But the insinuation that it'd be an act of corruption on her part, that he'd ever expect to use their connection to avoid his due was unbelievable.

 _How well does_ she _know_ me _?_ He'd get what he deserved. That had always been the plan. _Doesn't she_ know _that?_ "You know I'd never take advantage of your Spectre status," he spat. "I said I'd accept the consequences of my actions, and I meant it. I wanted my friend to be there and support my decision!"

She struggled against him uselessly for a moment. An insistent throb pulsed through him. Garrus ignored it, glaring at her, waiting for her answer. Then she bit her lip and jerked under him. Her hard, bony knee hit him in the inner thigh, and his entire leg went limp. She spun her wrist in the same movement he had made earlier and seized his arm in turn.

Garrus couldn't hold himself up. He started to fall toward her. Her body twisted violently. She hooked her leg behind his knees and rolled, taking his arm with her.

Pain lanced through his arm and shoulder. He saw her stepping up—planting one foot on the ground. The other stomped down toward his exposed left spur. Garrus jerked his leg away and rotated his wrist again to escape her hold.

She was up, and Garrus jackknifed to leap to his own feet, bringing his arms up to guard.

If Shepard had started off easy, the gloves were off now. First a move that could've killed him, then one that could've broken his leg. This wasn't like any turian military grudge match he'd ever fought; she was fighting him combat specialist to combat specialist now, expecting him to defend himself or die.

And damn, was it a turn-on.

 _If she respected my decisions half so much . . ._

Garrus rotated his wrist. It twinged, protesting—wrenched good, if she hadn't actually sprained it. He could feel his thigh swelling where her knee had hit.

Shepard's face was flushed, strands of hair escaping the gel she put in it before combat missions to curl around her ears and forehead. She thrust her chin up and forward. "I couldn't support my friend becoming a murderer, Garrus!" she shouted. "That's what it would've been there: murder, whether or not it was justified. I couldn't sit by and watch you do that to yourself. You're too important to me! I won't support you ruining your life!"

Garrus couldn't help but laugh. _And what the hell do you see when you look at me if it's not a ruined life, Shepard? My own damn fault._ If she was trying to stop him crossing from killer to murderer, she was at least a year too late. There was no going back for him. No saving him.

 _You can turn a disillusioned krogan merc into his people's savior. A socially anxious archaeologist into a ruthless shadow operative. A scared, hunted kid into a future admiral and a psychopathic convict into an almost stable sort-of soldier. But sometimes, Shepard, there is no redemption. And this is sure as hell the wrong mission to try and force it anyway._

"What life?" Garrus demanded. "We're on a suicide mission, remember?"

He charged at her, hit hard, pushing her out of the middle of the floor, past the table and the punching bag hanging beside it. She hit the bulkhead and his body hit hers, full contact.

Shepard gasped, wide eyes flying up to meet his in shock. She froze underneath him. Garrus swallowed. Then, deliberately, he loosened his grip on her wrists, pinned on either side of her head. But he didn't back away, even a millimeter.

He refused to be embarrassed. He refused to apologize. _At least until the adrenaline wears off._

 _And since we're being honest anyway . ._.

Shepard stared at him. Her heart rate blinked in the corner of Garrus's visor. He couldn't just see it, though, he could feel it—pulsing in her wrists, through her chest. Lower down. Blood flooded Shepard's face, but she didn't move away, even though he would have let her. And she didn't look away.

The air between them hummed, as if the storm behind her eyes could carry a charge. She lifted her chin. Then she shifted, just a slight movement, maybe even involuntary, starting at her heels—up _into_ him instead of away. "No," she told him. "We're not. Maybe I thought we were. Maybe I even wanted to be. But screw it." Another slight press up— _emphatic, instinctive?_ Garrus breathed in sharply, hands tightening on her wrists in reflex.

"I am not going through the Omega-4 relay to die again," she declared. "We have a life ahead of us, Garrus, and you need to make something of yours."

 _And what do you see ahead for us, Shepard?_ He had no idea. But looking at her now, he could almost believe her.

Her face hardened then, and her eyes narrowed. "That's only going to happen if you let go and move on—unless you want to end up like Massani."

She couldn't have hurt him worse if she'd shot him. Garrus dropped her like a red-hot fire iron, could still see the spittle flying from Massani's lips, smell the gas, and see the flames. Massani had been ready to damn an entire building of helpless near-slaves to die, just so long as Vido Santiago went down. "That was completely different!" Garrus yelled. "Zaeed was willing to kill innocents to get to the man that had hurt him. I was after Sidonis for what he did to my team, and I would never—I would _never_ —"

Words failed him. But Shepard just took a step away from the wall and folded her arms. "No?" she murmured. "Then tell me this, Garrus: Back there in the market, just how close were you to shooting through me to get to Sidonis?"

It was like she'd drenched him in cold water. Garrus's mandibles tightened. _I_ _wouldn't have hurt Shepard_ , he'd told Miranda. He believed it. But it wasn't good enough. Shepard knew it, and he did too.

Defeated, he nodded. "There was a moment," he whispered. "Just a _moment_ , where I thought about shooting you in the leg. Just to get you down and out of the way." He bowed his head. "I'm sorry."

That wasn't good enough either. It never would be. Maybe he wasn't any Massani yet, but what was Shepard to him? More than a random civilian—his best friend in the galaxy. Arrogant, blunt, aggressive, awkward, and secretive. Stubbornly optimistic enough to fundamentally change people anyone else would call lost causes, the bravest person he'd ever met or heard of, and the best and maybe only hope against the Reapers. The woman he—

And he'd considered shooting her. There was no safe place to hit someone with a high-powered rifle. He knew that.

Shepard turned again and headed back to the workout table. "I kind of figured."

Garrus stood in the middle of the cargo bay, exhausted. Beaten. Any turian referee probably would have awarded him the sparring match, but Garrus hadn't won this fight. She'd had him before it started. "Thinking that—I couldn't believe it," he admitted. "It made me stop. Really listen to what you were saying."

See Sidonis. Realize nothing would ever make it right.

"Yeah." Shepard set the cloth wrap back down on the table and picked up a jar of liniment. She began rubbing it into her wrists. "I kind of counted on that when I stayed in the shot."

He'd suspected as much, but it didn't make him feel better to hear it. It did make him feel a little better to see her avoiding his gaze now, obviously guilty over the manipulation. "I hated that I had to make you feel that way, but you weren't giving me a lot of options. Still—I'm sorry I put you in that position." She paused, then looked back over her shoulder. "I'm not sorry I did what I did," she said, quietly but firmly. "I'd do it again."

Garrus breathed out. "I don't know, Shepard," he confessed. "I keep thinking about it, how I felt when you were in the scope, but also what you said. How Sidonis sold his soul to save his skin, and now he has to pay the devil. And what he said. Whatever good is still in that bastard is going to torture him the rest of his miserable life. It still isn't justice, but whatever it is, it's better than a quick and easy death." He paused. "It wasn't your call," he reiterated. Shepard's mouth quirked sideways into something that was half acknowledgment of the point. "But . . . it's better than the one I would have made."

Shepard regarded him a moment, then jerked her head for him to come over. She handed him the liniment—smart medicine like medi-gel that would adapt to his different biology. He looked down at it. It would have been cheaper and easier for her to outfit her exercise area with purely human medication. _She planned for me to be here. Maybe not today, maybe not like this. But sometime._ "Use it on your wrist too," she ordered him.

He thanked her, and she started refitting her armor to return to her duties.

Garrus finished drawing the cloth wrap tight around itself and placed it on the table. He started applying the medicine. It had a sharp, antiseptic smell and tingled pleasantly where it came into contact with his hide. "No, really," he pressed. "For _everything_. This stuff, the fight, getting me off Omega." He paused. "And for what you did with Sidonis. Maybe sometimes I need that, like with Saleon. Someone to remind me where the line is."

 _We have a life ahead of us_ , she said. He couldn't see it. He had no idea what it would look like. He couldn't go back to C-Sec, wouldn't be a Spectre. Archangel was over and done with. But if Shepard saw some way for them to move forward without going back, on the other side of the Omega-4 relay or beyond—well. He'd promised her, hadn't he? Wrex too. _Straight through hell, until we both die or she kicks me to the curb._ And she hadn't yet.

Shepard shrugged. "Once I needed it too. You helped me do the right thing." She meant Ontarom, Garrus knew, the one place Shepard had been most tempted to let her ideals burn and enact vigilante justice herself. She could've shot one of the men responsible for the deaths of almost everyone in her squad on Akuze, the years-long torture of the only other survivor. No one would've blamed her. But she'd held back—to be consistent with the standards she'd upheld for Garrus.

She finished buckling her greaves on and turned to face him. "You're always there for me, Garrus," she said. "One day _I_ might not like the way _you_ do it, and then _I_ might get pissed."

Garrus finished rubbing the liniment into his sore wrist. "Well, I promise when that day comes, we can beat up on each other some more. If you want." Remembering her thighs on either side of his torso, her body up against his, he grinned. He gestured at her torso. "Think I got you pretty good once or twice." He extended the liniment tube toward her.

Shepard hadn't fastened her breastplate yet, and she went still as she caught his suggestion. To treat the side where he'd punched her, she'd have to take it off again. Her undershirt too. Her eyes found his. Garrus grinned wider.

Shepard's fingers twitched by her side, moving toward the place he'd hit her. Her gaze dropped to the liniment, then back up to him. Color washed back over her face, rising from her neck to her cheeks.

She probably would feel better if she treated her side, but that hadn't exactly been why he'd suggested it. He wasn't quite sure why he'd done it. _To lighten the mood? Test for a reaction?_

 _Anyway, I'm glad I did._ That was a definite reaction on Shepard's face there. He'd seen her blush before—and spent way too much time speculating about it. Most of the life signs he could pick up on his visor, the rare blush he'd seen, could have many interpretations. Physical exertion, fear, embarrassment, discomfort, awkwardness.

This time, though, he felt he didn't have to speculate. There was a new awareness in Shepard's eyes, and Garrus wondered if maybe all this time, she'd been missing he was interested.

 _Well, not anymore._

 _Good._

The length of her pause was telling. Finally, she gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and fastened her breastplate over her underarmor. "I got in a few hits myself," she said. There was a forced quality to the otherwise normal-sounding rejoinder. "If you hit the showers and I hit my cabin, it should take care of both of us. Get the explosives stink and krogan guts off too."

She bent down and scooped her gauntlets up. Garrus didn't turn away from the view, but screwed the top back onto the liniment and put it back onto the table. He shook his own head.

Oddly, he was more encouraged than otherwise that Shepard had refused to treat her side here in the cargo bay. In Garrus's experience, soldiers didn't usually bother with modesty _until_ sex came into it. Too many bodies in a barracks, injuries on the battlefield.

 _But maybe a little more?_

"You sure you're alright, Shepard? You're a little . . . pink." Garrus tapped his visor. "Heart rate's a bit fast, too."

Shepard's blush deepened to near-crimson. Her eyes flashed in annoyance. "Just the exercise, Vakarian," she told him.

Garrus laughed. "You didn't even break a sweat," he told her.

She made a noise of disgust. "I'm fine! I can tell you one thing, though: if I'm late for rounds because of you, I won't be alright. I will be very annoyed. Dismissed!" She shook her gauntlets under his nose, pivoted, and stomped away toward the elevator.

Garrus watched her go, still laughing. It was the most flustered he'd ever seen Shepard. Over him. There was no guarantee she'd be interested in acting on it. Honestly, from what he'd seen, chances were probably slim.

For now, though, she'd given him plenty more to think about. _You're important to me._ Lean, hard, muscled thighs gripping his waist as she scrambled for a hold on his chest. Reviewing the fight in his mind, he wondered if the Alliance had ever trained her to fight a turian in close combat. If not, she'd done well enough that he wouldn't bet on his chances of winning a second or third round. The length of her body against his, pressed up against the bulkhead.

Shepard had recommended a shower. As usual, she was right. Garrus finished buckling into his own hardsuit and headed up to the crew deck for a cold one.

* * *

 **A/N: For those of you who have read or are reading The Disaster Zone along with this story, this chapter is concurrent with the events of Chapter Six of** _ **Resurrection**_ **, "Letting Go."**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	37. Exodus: Rameses

**Rameses: The pharaoh of the Exodus story central to Judeo-Christian tradition is popularly identified with Rameses, also spelled Ramses or Ramesses. In the Exodus story, the pharaoh held the Hebrew people in bondage until God delivered them from Egypt.**

* * *

XXXVII

Exodus: Rameses

After their spat in the shuttle bay, Garrus didn't really get to talk to Shepard for days. She called him out on routine team-building missions just like she always did—to take down pirates, fight batarian terrorists, or rescue colonies near the Perseus Veil from random geth attacks—but the way she set up the missions had changed. Now, Shepard was experimenting with fire teams—splitting up the squad like she'd done on Horizon and assigning one team to circle the enemy, to scout ahead or to clean up behind. And now, every time, Garrus was on the other team—a familiar contact point that every other person on the squad had fought beside at one time or another, easing them into working independently from Shepard.

Garrus's presence in the other fire team was pretty much the only constant. Shepard experimented with the setup of the fire teams too. She used different leaders. Massani, Grunt, Samara, Taylor, and Lawson all got their chance to call the shots, communicating over the radio with Shepard's team at all times. Never the people they all knew would be support—Jack, Tali, Goto, Solus, Krios, Legion—but everyone who might think they could lead or anyone else might expect to. This part of the setup, Garrus thought, was less of an experiment on Shepard's part than the rest of it. Instead, Shepard was letting the entire squad feel what she had already observed—letting them work out for themselves, on lower priority missions, who they could trust to keep everyone together and who they couldn't.

Not that any mission was ever easy or without risk. Shepard argued with Chakwas in the medical bay about a brief uptick in minor injuries. At the end of six days and eight missions deep in the heart of the Terminus, the squad was exhausted. But they were also working together better than ever, and it was clear that no matter who Shepard formally put in charge of a second team and no matter who made it up, by the time everyone went home, the second team was listening to either Garrus or Miranda.

Garrus would have been happy to defer to Lawson completely. She was a more conservative commander than he was. That mattered—both to Shepard and to their mission. And Lawson wanted it. But no matter what his brain said on the _Normandy_ , when he saw something in the field, with Shepard leading another team, he found he slipped back into giving orders without thinking about it. And the squad listened. They knew him now—better than anyone but Shepard. They trusted him. It made him uncomfortable, but he knew that if he ever stopped listening to Lawson's orders, spoke out just a little bit more, they would all fall in behind him. Jack was the only one that was vocal about not wanting to work with Lawson, but Garrus knew she wasn't the only one to dislike or distrust the Cerberus operative.

But Garrus also knew that when they made it past the Omega-4 Relay, Shepard would need more than one person equipped to lead a second team. If the Collectors blew the _Normandy_ up again or one of Harbinger's minions took Garrus out before the mission was complete, there had to be someone else capable of taking charge and completing a secondary objective for Shepard. And frankly, he would just as soon not have been the go-to lieutenant. Every time any of them looked at him for orders, he wondered what he was missing, how much pressure he was putting on them, how he could get them killed where Shepard wouldn't. Jack sprained her ankle one day. Another day, Tali was too close to an enemy incendiary. Both injuries weren't serious. Doctor Chakwas had them patched up and ready for duty again within two days each. Both times someone else had technically been supposed to give the orders. But Garrus wondered if he could have saved them, could have spared Shepard the lecture about reckless live training tactics. He wondered if he would have ended up giving orders to the rest of the squad at all if Shepard hadn't pushed him like she had. If he had had less ground time, would the squad have looked more to Lawson, or to Taylor instead?

Garrus kept his doubts to himself. The team didn't have time for his crisis of confidence. He did what made sense in the field, made decisions when he needed to, and tried to be satisfied that when he let Lawson take the lead, the others would too. Usually. But the pressure was building. He could feel it. And it didn't help that every day since Pragia, on her daily rounds, Shepard had only stopped by the battery long enough to say "hello," "good work today," and "carry on."

It was about what everyone else got on a normal day, unless someone had news from home or a report about onboard processes. But ever since the _SR-1_ days, Shepard had come by his station last, right before she went off official duty for the evening. Often enough, and more and more as time had gone on, she would stay past the end of her shift. Maybe it wasn't fair, but he had gotten used to the attention.

He needed to talk to her. He knew the answers to a lot of what he might say about the new training regimen and how, once again, he was inadvertently finding himself in charge.

" _I don't think I can do what you want me to do on this crew."_

He knew he could, and probably better than anyone else.

" _I don't deserve this."_

True. But Shepard needed it, and so did the team.

" _What if I screw up?"_

People could die, and all Shepard's dreams of coming back from the Omega-4 Relay could die too. If they didn't fight smart to begin with, though, their chances would be worse.

There were a couple of other things he might talk to Shepard about too, Garrus thought, and he was running out of time to do it. But when it came to _other things_ , he didn't even know how to start articulating them in his head, let alone work out what Shepard might say in response. Garrus guessed he knew her about as well as anyone did, but she was still reluctant to get personal. The last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable or ruin what was already the best relationship of his life by making it awkward.

But he couldn't help it. He wanted to know. Every time he saw her in the mess, every time she dropped by the battery for another half a minute of nothing, he wanted to ask: _Am I crazy?_ She had said that he was important to her, that she always liked his company. At times, he thought she had been attracted to him. _No idea why she would be_.

He didn't ask. Even setting aside human regulations that he wasn't entirely sure she followed, in all the records, Shepard was his commanding officer. In the field and on the ship, things had become a little more complicated than that. That was down to her. But if someone was going to change things between them, he knew it should be her move again. But _spirits_ , he wanted to ask. Near a week out from Pragia, when she still hadn't said more than two consecutive sentences directly to him, Garrus was close to insane.

So, when he got pinged for a smaller mission in the Alpha Draconis system of the Rosetta Nebula, Garrus felt like a vice that had been squeezing his chest had suddenly loosened. Looking down at the orders on his omni-tool, Garrus breathed a sigh of relief. Shepard had only sent them to him, to Taylor, and to Lawson. They were doing this old school.

His first thought, based on recent patterns, was specialty training—that Shepard was going to drill the three of them in communications, give them special instructions for the fight against the Collectors, maybe. But when he made his way down to the shuttle bay and saw Taylor's face, he knew that this was personal again, that they were going to deal with whatever it was that had been eating the armory officer. He glanced at Lawson and saw she was watching Taylor out of the corner of her eyes. _She's worried, and she's here now for the same reason Shepard brought Taylor to help us secure Oriana._

Niels hadn't made it to the shuttle bay yet, and neither had Shepard, so Garrus went to lean on the Kodiak next to Taylor. "You want to tell me our objective?"

"My father went missing ten years ago," Taylor told him. His voice was even, but his fingers tapped a fast rhythm on the Kodiak. "A few weeks ago, a source inside Cerberus that I can't trace alerted me that the ship he was on sent out a beacon from this world. We're going to find out what happened."

Garrus's mandibles tightened. "You up for this?"

Taylor grimaced. "Have to put it to rest, Garrus. I'd made my peace. I thought. But now I know his ship was here . . ." he shrugged. "I have to know."

Garrus hummed. He unhooked the Mantis and started examining the mods he had on it. "Let me see," a voice said. High-grade ceramic-and-mesh gauntlets reached for his gun. Garrus turned to look into Shepard's face, less than a meter away.

He handed her his rifle. "If you've started using your tactical cloak like Kasumi, I may have to resign."

Shepard rolled her eyes and started examining the tech on the Mantis. "As much as I love that tactical cloak, I haven't gone that far yet. You're preoccupied and didn't see me coming. You're slipping, Vakarian."

"You want to have a skulking contest sometime, Shepard?" he challenged her.

"Hah!" She said expressively. "With Thane or Kasumi maybe. Anyone could spot your broody, self-important butt at two hundred meters. In a crowd."

"At least I don't wear armor that glows in the dark," Garrus retorted, eyeing Shepard's hardsuit, which was an iridescent purple today. Every few days she got bored and repainted it with the fabrication program in her cabin. There was almost always an Alliance blue detail on it somewhere, usually in the stripe, but the rest of it was subject to change without notice.

"And that's a disappointment to all of us," Shepard shot back. She tapped the barrel extension he'd fitted to the Mantis. "You know, with the armor-piercing applications you have on this thing, the high-velocity barrel here's redundant. It adds weight to the gun without a real upgrade to the penetration. You could use a simpler barrel extension. Make the gun easier to carry without a decrease in performance."

Garrus shook his head, taking the gun back. "I could tell you I designed it that way on purpose. A heavier gun's better for clubbing husks." Shepard looked at him, and he chuckled once, giving up. "Truth is, the armor-piercing app's new. Hadn't thought that the mod's designed to do the same thing. Thanks." He looked across the shuttle bay, but they were still waiting for Niels. Taylor, down the side of the shuttle, was lost in his head somewhere, and Lawson had moved to sit next to him, offering silent support.

Garrus cocked his head at Shepard. "So, fair's fair. Hand over the Widow." He extended his own hand, curling his fingers in to prompt her.

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You've been waiting for this chance for a while."

"Or the Locust. I'm not picky, really."

She laughed then, unclipped the Locust from her belt, and gave it to him handle first. "Actually, if you know some good mods for this one, I'd be grateful. It's the best range SMG we've found, but it is an older model. Partially retrofitted to make room for a thermal clip configuration, but not a lot of current gen mods are compatible with it."

"I haven't used Kassa equipment too much myself," Garrus mused. "Just sporadically on the _SR-1_ , really, but they make some quality gear. I've been a little jealous. Almost everyone but me seems to have one of these babies."

Taylor finally came back to the conversation. "I don't," he said. "Over half of us don't. The Locust is a nice gun at range. Less good in close quarters. Slower fire rate too, compared to some."

Lawson shrugged. "I suppose that matters, if you can't hit a target the first couple times you shoot it."

"Hey now," Taylor said mildly. "You know I don't use automatic weapons at all. I don't hit anything without raw skill."

Garrus handed the Locust back to Shepard. "I'll do some research. Keep an eye out. I have a few contacts that might have some ideas for you." Garrus thought of Solana, who had built a gun from scrap for her final marksmanship in secondary school before basic that had outperformed the fancy Armax Arsenal rifle another student's mother had bought her for the test. Sol probably knew a few things about modding older-model guns, from any relatively well-known manufacturer in Council space. _Whether she'll share them is the question._

The elevator across the bay opened, and Niels hurried out. "Sorry I'm late, Commander," he said. "I was on a call with Carla and Matty. Carla knew I had to fly, but we couldn't get Matty off the line."

Shepard stood. "You're not late, Caleb. Be a couple minutes before we're in the drop zone. How's your family?"

"Beautiful," Niels smiled. "Worried, but I told them, 'Commander Shepard's put together the best team you've ever seen. Legendary biotics, genius-level engineers, a giant krogan, you'll see. We'll stop the Collectors, and I'll have leave to see you real soon.'"

"You're the unsung hero here, Niels," Shepard told him. "Every time we go down to the ground, every time we come back safe, it's thanks to you. We couldn't do any of this without you."

Niels shook his head, grinning. "I'm a glorified truck driver, and I know it, Commander. But at least I'm your truck driver. Come on. Everybody in."

He unlocked the shuttle and opened the doors just as the _Normandy_ began to slow in its orbit around the planet to drop the shuttle. Taylor swung in first, and Lawson followed him like a shadow. Garrus climbed in afterward and sat opposite the two of them. Shepard sat beside him as usual. He could feel her proximity, like a prickling through his armor. Was she as aware of him? Humans didn't have subvocals, silent or speaking. Her face showed nothing.

"This planet was only charted ten years ago," Niels observed from the cockpit of the shuttle as they flew out of the _Normandy_ bay and began to drop down through the atmosphere.

"Right," Taylor told him. "The _Hugo Gernsback_ disappeared on a survey mission. Until now, we never knew if they arrived at all. Initial findings suggested it could be suitable for human colonization, but obviously, the final report never arrived either."

Garrus refocused, directing his attention to conversation about the planet and the mission at hand. "What do you expect to find?" Shepard asked.

"Wreckage? Bones?" Taylor speculated. "It's been ten years. But the beacon didn't go up until last year. Something strange happened here, Shepard."

"I'm picking up _something_ metallic down there where the probe landed," Niels said. "Could be a crash site."

As the shuttle descended, Niels eventually got a visual. "There's a lot of the ship left," he reported. "I'll put you down close by."

"Be ready," Shepard advised. "We don't know what happened here or what kind of lifeforms may live on this planet."

Niels came to a hovering halt, and the four of them got off the shuttle. Garrus felt rich earth beneath his boots. Birds cried out in the skies, and in the distance, an ocean crashed. The temperature was cool, but well within the comfort range for humans—and not at all outside his own. Tall trees and thick ferns grew all around. Garrus breathed in oxygen-rich air and felt a sea breeze on his face.

The world seemed a perfect colony prospect, a wonderful change from planet after planet landing in stormy jungles or rocky wastes or burning deserts. _But you've been spacing long enough to know that things aren't always as they seem._ Garrus had seen worlds as beautiful as this one where everything was deadly poison, and it was always a possibility that a new world might contain a predator as deadly as the thresher maw that no one had seen before.

The wreck of the _Hugo Gernsback_ cast a shadow over the treeline, less than a klick away. Black against the sun, Garrus could see moss growing from the jagged metal skeleton of the ship.

EDI's voice came over the radio. "I have run a scan of the ship," she reported. "I detect no life signs, but there may be useful technology or information still inside."

Aside from the birds and the constant sound of the surf against the rocks close by, there was no sound as they walked along the rocks and through trees that looked like Earthen _Arecaceae_. The wreck came into view. As Niels had said, there was a lot of it left. The hulk soared up into the sky. Garrus saw complete bulkheads and decks sticking up out of the ground, full white letters on the side that translated to _Hugo Gernsback_ through his implant.

Garrus frowned, and Taylor spoke his thought aloud. "There it is, and mostly intact. They could have survived impact, but it's been years."

And if it had been years, why were they just now hearing about the wreck? Just eyeballing the wreckage of the _Hugo Gernsback_ , Garrus could see two or three places where small groups of people could have clustered together and braced themselves against the crash. But there were bird nests in the crevices of the broken rebar that jutted toward the sky. There were places the bulkhead, exposed to air and weather and untended for years on end, had begun to rust through. The white letters of the ship's name, on closer examination, had begun to wear away. This wreck had lay unattended for at least five years, probably closer to the ten it had been missing. Why?

As they passed into the shadow of the wreck, Garrus saw other places where tech and wiring had been cut away from the ship's interior, mechanical parts that had been dragged away from the crash site and lay dismantled to the side. "Looks like it was stripped after the crash," Taylor said. "They'd have tried to get a beacon up as soon as possible."

The crew had forced their way out of the crashed hull, it looked like, torching and bending their way out of the impact site. Taylor stooped to enter the improvised exit. "Shepard," he called.

The three of them crowded around him. There was a live terminal in the jury-rigged doorway, flickering with low power and covered in moss and dust. But there was a log preserved there, and Taylor played it back.

It was only a partial, the audio decayed by time and neglect, but Garrus could make out a staticky, corrupted male voice, sounding worried. ". . . along with this anymore. We've done horrible things to the crew . . ." The sound cut out for a moment. ". . . conditions they're in; they don't understand what we're doing to them. Distract them for two seconds and they forget wha-wha-what you did before the bruises show. I-i-i-it's got to stop. I'm talking to the others as soon—" The recording cut out in a hiss of static. The rest proved unsalvageable.

Garrus went cold, and to the side, Shepard's face had gone hard. It was far from a complete picture of what had happened here, but it was dark enough. Taking the lead back from Taylor, who looked troubled, Shepard moved further into the wreck of the _Gernsback_.

There was an overhang where they found a few empty cans of food, evidence of a long-abandoned camp, and an electronic diary. Like the deliberately preserved log, it was badly corrupted, but the fragment they were able to recover sounded just as bad as the first. Another male voice, different from the first, sounding smug and furtive: ". . . always said no. She even threatened to report if I didn't stop sending messages. But now she's so innocent. They all are. And the look she has when she smiles—" the recording skipped— ". . . it's sure easier now. What's the harm? We're stuck here any—"

"What happened here?" Garrus asked. On each human face around him, he saw the same fury and disgust he felt at the implications. Abuse of incapacitated crew members by the officers, it sounded like—physical and otherwise. But how had the crew been incapacitated?

There were no more answers to be had from the diary, so they kept looking. On the other side of the old camp, they found a little more. Deeper in the recesses of the ship, there was a datapad assigned to one _Teresa Varness, Medical Officer_. Examining this datapad, Shepard found some corrupted medical records; prescriptions, allergies, a record of appointments some ten years ago. And a few audio logs. There was one dated a few weeks after the _Gernsback_ had gone missing. The medical officer's datapad had been better protected from the elements, and the recording came through with a clearer sound, but in it, Teresa Varness sounded confused, and she stammered. "What? What was her name? Sarah? S-Suzanne?" Her voice grew higher, panicked-sounding. "My God, I can't remember! I can't remember her face! We need to get out. So I can remember—can-can think straight. They have to hurry."

"There's something wrong here," Lawson said suddenly, looking out of the _Gernsback_ at the planet outside. "Either these people were drugged, or something in the environment affected their minds. We should put on our helmets until we learn what it was."

"Agreed," Shepard said. Once all of them had put on their helmets and sealed their suits, they kept searching the wreck.

But the _Hugo Gernsback_ had been picked clean a decade ago. There were no remaining food stores, blankets, or evidence that the wreck was in any way still used as a basecamp, and no signs telling where the crew had gone. There was one more log, near the back of the wreck, older than any of the others, and just as corroded. When Shepard played it, another woman spoke, sounding more lucid than Teresa had but almost as worried as the first man. ". . . can't expect the luxury of d-d-due process," Garrus made out through the corruption, "but this i-i-isn't a military ship. Just bumping the command line up a notch doesn't work. Cap-cap-captain Fairchild knew this crew. His replacement doesn't command the same level of respect. I'm hoping the man has it in him, but I do—" The recording cut out after that, but the woman's tone had said it all. She had doubted that whoever had replaced Captain Fairchild could care for the crew as well.

Shepard led the four of them back out into the sun and along the outside of the ship. Near the end of the wreckage, they found something more promising. A beacon was still running. The VI attached was speaking the message it would also be beaming out to space.

"Repeat: Toxology alert: Danger of rapid neural decay. Local flora chemically incompatible with human physiology. Override. Beacon resumed. Pause time: 8 years, 237 days, 7 hours."

At the beacon's base, Garrus saw moss and rust there, grass and weeds that had grown over the wires running to a humming generator sheltered in the shadow of the shipwreck. The beacon itself had been set up years ago, but for some reason, it hadn't been active long.

Shepard echoed his analysis. "From the look of it, this beacon's been here a while. Why would they wait years to signal?"

The VI went silent. It flickered, then interacted as programmed with the presumed rescuer or investigator. "Pause in beacon protocol: 8 years, 237 days, 7 hours," it intoned. "Pause is recorded as: record deleted by Acting Captain Ronald Taylor."

Jacob shook his head, stepping back. "That's not right. My father was first officer." Garrus glanced at him. _Ronald Taylor was the successor that female survivor was skeptical of. Whatever happened here, he was in charge when it did._

"Ronald Taylor was promoted under emergency command protocols," the beacon confirmed. "Other flagged issues: Unsafe deceleration. Local food and neural decay. Beacon activation protocols."

Shepard looked back at Lawson. "Local food impairs brain functions? What are the effects?"

"Impairment of mental function due to chemical imbalance begins within seven days of ingesting local flora, regardless of decontamination or preparation," the beacon answered. "Impact on higher cognitive abilities and long-term memory is cumulative, but significant within a standard month. It is not known if local decay is permanent. Data collection was not completed."

Shepard tilted her head at Lawson, and Miranda nodded. The four of them removed their helmets. As long as they didn't eat anything, they would be safe from the confusion and memory loss that had apparently affected the _Gernsback_ 's crew. "I assume 'unsafe deceleration' refers to the crash," Shepard guessed. "Give me the details."

"Following an unspecified impact and sublight drive failure, the _Hugo Gernsback_ made an unscheduled descent at 465 percent of theoretical recommended suborbital velocity," the beacon recited. "The _Hugo Gernsback_ then decelerated at 782 percent of theoretical recommended approach velocity, sustaining significant damage to investment and crew."

"Why are you comparing the crash to theoretical speeds?" Shepard asked.

"The _Hugo Gernsback_ was constructed off-world," the beacon replied. "It is not rated for suborbital descent, and doing so exceeded operational parameters."

Shepard nodded, satisfied. "Who is in command of this ship?" she asked. "Where are the survivors?"

"Captain Harris Fairchild reported killed following unscheduled suborbital descent," answered the beacon. _Died in the crash_ , Garrus translated in his head. "First Officer Ronald Taylor promoted in field to acting captain."

Taylor shook his head, impatient. "But where is he now?" he demanded.

"The location of the remaining crew of the _Hugo Gernsback_ is unknown," the beacon informed them. "This beacon has been unattended for several maintenance cycles."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "Why wasn't the beacon activated before now?"

"This emergency beacon became functional after 358 days, 12 hours, following the unscheduled suborbital descent of the _Hugo Gernsback_ ," the VI answered. "Activation was triggered remotely after 8 years, 237 days, 7 hours, on the authority of Acting Captain Ronald Taylor. Pause in beacon protocol is recorded as: record deleted."

It was clear they weren't going to get anything else out of the VI. Garrus could sketch together a broad picture of what had happened now. The _Hugo Gernsback_ had crashed on the planet. The captain, Harris Fairchild, and an unspecified number of others had died on impact. At least four officers and members of the crew, probably more, and Jacob's father Ronald Taylor, had survived the crash. Ronald Taylor had become acting captain. The survivors had managed to get the beacon up in a little less than a year, but it was clear from the old logs at the crash site that the toxic food of this world had affected at least some. And during the interval, some of the officers had taken advantage of the affected crew.

"Come on," Shepard said quietly. "Let's get going."

Jacob looked confused. Disturbed. He stared at the dirt, and a muscle worked in his jaw. "My father had a working beacon but didn't signal for almost nine years," he said. He seemed to be talking to himself. "Maybe . . . that neural decay affected him."

Garrus frowned. "It must have, after so long."

Lawson tilted her head in hesitant agreement. "Avoiding it for a decade seems . . . unlikely."

But Shepard pursed her lips. "Jacob, I don't like this," she said.

Jacob looked at her. "Neither do I," he admitted.

They followed the trees around, moving toward the beach. There was a trail of discarded metal—parts from the _Gernsback_ , either abandoned as useless or deliberately left as a trail, but it gave them a direction to go.

They didn't have to go very far. As the trees opened up, giving them a view of a stretch of sand and a short cliff ahead, a woman came running at them from among the rocks. She ran into Lawson's arms, and Lawson's hair stood up with alarmed biotics before she realized the woman wasn't attacking. Instead, she was beaming, clutching Lawson's forearms as if greeting family.

"You came?!" she cried. "From the sky?! The leader said someone would come! He delayed for so long, but he still has power!"

The woman was dressed in old, faded engineering coveralls, bleached by the sun; torn and stained. Although she was relatively healthy-looking, indicating she had had access to some sort of food and water, her hair hung in bedraggled, greasy locks across her forehead and cheeks, a mixture of dark brown and iron gray. It had been cut unevenly, level with her chin, as if with a knife. Her nails were long and ragged, and they dug into Miranda's forearms with sudden anxiety.

"Some have lost faith—the hunters!" she told Lawson. "They will have seen your star! They will not let you help him."

Shepard stepped forward, commanding the survivor's attention. "Who are you?" she rapped out. "What was your rank on the _Gernsback_?"

The woman's face scrunched up, and she released Lawson with one hand to hold her temple. "Uhh—Ah—I-I can't think," she tried to explain. "The leader thinks for us, and-and we serve, so-so we can go home." She stammered, her voice foggy, speaking as if from a memorized lesson book. The words she spoke sounded unnatural too— _leader, delay, faith, star_ ,and _sky_ to refer to _ships_ and _space_ —like mythical terms from a story told to a child. "But—some want to fight him," the woman told them, looking at Shepard now. "They were cast out. He exiled them, so they hunt his machines and those who help him. They don't believe that rescue will come—"

Shepard had glanced toward the sea, and right as a gunshot sounded, she moved. "Watch out!" She lunged, shoving the woman to the ground and Lawson to the side.

Garrus whirled, drawing his rifle, to see several armed human men closing in from the beach. They were unshaven, in worn and bleached uniforms like the woman's, but with wild, uncomprehending eyes.

The woman curled up into a ball behind a large rock. "Hunters!" she whimpered. "They won't stop until the leader is dead!"

"Kill them!" one of the men snarled in an indistinct voice. "Agents of the liar! He will not escape!"

The men were as obviously impaired as the woman had been, but their neural degeneration was even more disturbing. They were like animals. They fired their weapons—heavy pistols and submachine guns—with bared, shining teeth, howling wordless war cries. Each man among them seemed completely sold on the spray-and-pray suppressing fire style of combat. Their aim was bad, but they held the triggers of those guns like their fingers were frozen. Bullets were everywhere.

The beach was a rocky one, with lots of cover, but that was something that bit both ways. As Garrus crouched behind a boulder, seeing rock dust and sparks fly up from the places where Shepard, Taylor, and Lawson were similarly situated, his visor also tracked the hunters moving, slinking from shadow to shadow up ahead so it was hard to tell how many of them there were, and firing all the way.

Someone's gun was blaring, overheated. These guns were older models, Garrus realized, without disposable heat sinks. _Of course they are. They were all issued over a decade ago._ That meant the hunters had unlimited ammo, but with their particular brand of the survivor neural degeneration—

Garrus swung out of cover and fired once—a headshot that hit directly in the center of the target's forehead and dropped him like a rock. But in that same split second, five wild shots evaporated his shields, and Garrus hit the dirt behind the boulder again in an instant, only to meet another man that had got around him.

His crazed eyes were blazing. His skin was like cracked leather, and his sparse gray hair was a tangled, matted mess. He brought his SMG, also blaring the old overheat warning, around like a bludgeon. Garrus almost reacted too late. He twisted away, taking the heavy blow on his armored shoulder instead of on his head. Garrus swept his leg around behind the human's, knocking him off his feet. Windmilling backward, the man clutched instinctively at Garrus's wrist with one hand. His fingernails were almost like turian talons—long, ragged, and wickedly sharp. He hauled up on Garrus's arm, mouth agape with the intention to bite.

Garrus kicked out at the man's stomach. He felt his boots tear the man's uniform, felt at least two of the man's ribs give way. The man yelped and released Garrus's arm, and Garrus clubbed him hard with the butt of his own rifle. Bone cracked again, and the human's wild eyes went glassy and empty.

At least three more overheat warnings were sounding, and Garrus heard the Locust and the Widow as Lawson and Shepard took advantage, along with the duller sound of Taylor's shotgun.

Looking out from over cover again, Garrus saw two more men charge Taylor, unarmed. They were like Reaper husks in their mindless violence. Unlike husks, there was no deadly electric charge when they died. They collapsed, helpless, to the beach, like varren.

"Surrender," Shepard yelled. "We don't want to fight you!"

She got no comprehensible answer, and the hunters did not surrender.

When it was over, Shepard went back to the woman that had spoken to them before, cowering behind her rock. But the woman wouldn't speak to them again. She whimpered gibberish about the leader and the hunters and didn't move. Lawson walked over to the corpses of the men, looking down at them with distaste. "That wasn't neural decay," she said. "They were feral."

Taylor shook his head. "My father wouldn't let this go on. Something is very wrong."

It was like something from a vid, Garrus mused, following Shepard and Taylor up the beach, around an apparent path into a canyon. Castaways lost for a decade, fighting a hostile world. Completely isolated from any sort of law, people became vulnerable to the worst natural impulses they possessed. What had happened here had all the makings of a horror story or a psychological thriller, but the crazed men with guns, the gibbering, insane victims of whatever had happened here were all around them. And Jacob's father was tied up in all of it.

Back on Illium, Taylor had joked with Garrus about family dysfunction. _Poor bastard. He doesn't deserve this._

By the side of a path worn through years of use, Garrus saw one of the machines the woman on the beach had mentioned—a LOKI mech, shot down. Someone had cannibalized the remains to get at the wire and transformers inside. "Stripped for parts," Taylor noted. "Tech's wearing out. Those hunters must be laying on the pressure."

"Do you think these people would know what to do with the parts?" Garrus wondered aloud. "The woman on the beach couldn't tell us her name."

Shepard hummed. "Guess we'll find out. Look." She gestured with her rifle ahead, where through two rock walls, a plume of smoke and some cloth flapping in the breeze could be seen.

"Is that a settlement?" Jacob queried. "They'd better be friendlier than the beach group. I need answers."

They were all ready to defend themselves if necessary, but as they entered into the canyon, no one attacked. There were several survivors here—a dozen at least, maybe more. One tended the fire. Two more washed clothes in a metal barrel of water, blank-eyed. Most sat around near open shelters, staring into the distance. As they entered, eyes turned toward them, but no one said anything.

Garrus looked at the faded uniforms, the _Gernsback_ label on several crates supporting shelters and accoutrements. "Huh. They're from the same group as the ones that attacked us, but these are docile."

Shepard's eyes narrowed, and her jaw was tight. "There aren't any men here," she said. Her voice sounded clipped. "Maybe it affects sexes differently? Makes males get violent?"

Garrus took another look at the camp. She was right, he saw. Every survivor in sight was female, ranging from women that looked just a little older than Shepard to one with white hair clumsily plaited into a crown around her head and drawing with a gnarled finger in the sandy soil.

Lawson surveyed the campsite too. "Possibly," she answered Shepard, "but the woman on the beach said the leader exiled the hunters before they turned."

 _All the men exiled_ before _they turned?_ Garrus frowned. He was liking this less and less.

Jacob was getting angrier. "It doesn't matter now," he said dismissively, striding forward toward the nearest cluster of women. "One of these people must know what my father has to do with this."

One of them, a younger woman with gray-blue eyes and flyaway light brown hair, backed away from Taylor as he approached. "You have his face!" she murmured, wrapping her arms around her body protectively. "He promised to call the sky, but he sends nothing!"

Another woman rose and stepped in front of the other. She was older, with skin a darker, richer brown than Shepard's—more like Jacob's—and tightly, wildly curling hair that grew out from her head in every direction. She extended her arm back, blocking off the younger woman from view, and pointed her other finger at Jacob angrily. "He forced us to eat, to . . . decay!" she said, finding the words with difficulty. "You are . . . cursed with his face!"

Jacob stepped back, face darkening. He lowered his shotgun and raised his free hand defensively. Shepard stepped in between Taylor and the women, raising her own hands. _It's okay,_ her posture said. _We're not going to hurt you._

The women retreated, huddling closer together and eyeing Jacob with suspicion.

"Not the best reaction to the family resemblance, Jacob," Shepard said lightly, but there was a dangerous tension to her now.

Jacob's brows were low over his eyes. His muscles had gone taut as well. "Why would my father force his crew to eat toxic food?" he muttered. "Whatever's happening here needs to stop."

They tried to talk with the other survivors, but they wouldn't—or couldn't—talk. Some mumbled about the hunters, or about what the leader might do to them, or shied away from Jacob into shelters. Some just couldn't seem to put the words together to say anything at all.

When they found a crate full of strange vegetables, berries, and nuts, Taylor kicked at the ground. "They've been eating only that toxic local food for who knows how long! Like that wasn't obvious enough."

At the center of the camp, there was a stack of crates from the _Gernsback_ , wrapped in wires and rebar and structured into some kind of crude statue. When they walked closer to it, they saw the survivors had used the wire and rebar to make a sort of face at the top. Garrus frowned. "What the hell?" Jacob demanded. "Someone had to push them to make that. That's borderline . . . worship."

Just then, a mechanical voice spoke from the other side of the canyon. "Your leader demands obedience," it called in emotionless tones. "Weapons are forbidden." Automatic fire from a cheap submachine gun sounded, echoing off the rocks of the canyon.

The women in the camp screamed and dived into shelters, behind rocks, and Garrus turned to see three LOKIs marching in formation out of the other exit to the canyon, firing as they walked. He and Shepard took two out with tech bursts. Miranda gunned down the third, and Jacob walked over to the sparking chassises, nudging them with the toe of his boot.

"His mechs shoot without question?" Garrus wondered. "Not the best solution for long-term discipline."

Taylor nodded. "That would make them hate him. Maybe it was just for defense."

A woman had been standing near the canyon exit. She came out from behind a rock, clutching a datapad and walking toward them with short, shuffling, hesitant steps. She was fixated on Jacob, and there was a lingering intelligence in her dark brown eyes. "Please," she said diffidently, pushing the datapad at Taylor. Garrus glanced at her sharply. He recognized her voice. She was Teresa Varness, the medical officer whose log they had found at the crash site.

Taylor took the datapad, staring at her. "Here, you can end it," she told him. "You—have his face, but you fight his machines. You might stop this. This . . ." she gestured at the datapad. "I forget how to . . . read, but this was the start. What he promised, and what they did to us." She looked at Shepard, at all of them then, chin lifted. "We need the sky," she said. "Take us back to the sky."

Then Teresa Varness walked back to the other women. She wandered from shelter to shelter, talking with the others softly, drawing them out into the camp, hugging some, adjusting the disheveled hair and clothes of others. _She's still a leader_ , Garrus thought. Like the others, her brain was clearly damaged by the toxic food that grew on this world, but she had retained enough intelligence to keep a record of what had happened here, maintain it was wrong, and ask for help when it came. She seemed superstitious, assigning Jacob the power to end things here through a perceived duality with the power she knew on this planet—like appearance but unlike actions—but Garrus was impressed by the level of coherency she had retained compared to the others.

"I hope someone can help these people," he murmured. "Whatever's happened here, these people didn't deserve this."

Jacob was busy reading the datapad Teresa had given them. "Jacob," Shepard prompted him, quietly. "What does it say?"

"It's a crew logbook," Taylor answered after a while. "Some of them thought the beacon repair was taking too long. They were afraid they'd run out of supplies and lose their minds to the decay. My father restricted the ship food for himself and the other officers so they wouldn't be affected. Everybody else had to eat the toxic food and hope for treatment later. The rest is a casualty list. A few mutinied over the decision. My father and his officers turned the mechs on them."

Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked, Garrus thought. Ronald Taylor's actions, so far, made sense. Harsh, maybe, but it might have been the best way to save the most people. Shepard seemed to agree. "The beacon was fixed after a year, so the plan must have worked. Why no signal?"

But Jacob's face was hardening. His brown eyes seemed to turn flat and golden as he scrolled through the logbook. "Those weren't the last entries on the casualty list," he said. His voice had gone sharp and punctuated. Lawson looked more worried than Garrus had ever seen her as she watched her friend. "More incidents. Harsh punishments. It's like they're cattle . . . or toys. In a year, all the male crew members are flagged as 'exiled' or dead."

Garrus's fists clenched. The hunters.

"They separated out the women," Taylor went on. "Assigned them to officers like pets. And after the beacon is fixed, the officers appear in the casualties, too—after! My father took control and didn't stop it."

Garrus's stomach churned. His blood burned. He looked from Shepard to Lawson. Both of their faces were flat and expressionless, too carefully impassive. Both women were professionals, and Garrus could tell they were trying to keep a grip on their disgust and revulsion, for Jacob's sake. This was ten times worse for him, and they knew it.

The logs they had heard back at the crash site. The women here who cringed away from Jacob and his resemblance to Ronald Taylor but seemed more at ease with Shepard and Lawson. A record of exiled man, officer casualties. The implications here were sick, and they were ugly. If things here had gone down the way all the evidence suggested, Ronald Taylor deserved to die. But there couldn't be any misunderstanding about what had happened.

Garrus cleared his throat. "Does it say why he separated the men and women, or is it as bad as it seems?"

Taylor shook his head. "No, it turns to gibberish," he said. "Maybe the men got violent early on, but from the state of this place, I'd say the hunter thing is recent. What he allowed here—I don't see any justification."

"Anything in there about whether the effects of the toxic food can be treated?" That was Shepard, in the same controlled, clipped voice she had used when they had first heard what Garrus realized must have been officer logs by the wreck.

Jacob shook his head again. "Nothing. But it seems like the right call. If everyone gets it, who's left to fix the beacon? You'd never get out. But they did fix it, and the signal wasn't sent until now." He looked back at the camp, his face like stone. "I'm starting to see why."

Shepard was watching Teresa Varness. "We haven't seen any other officers," she said quietly. "He killed them?"

"There were five after the crash," Jacob replied. "Navigation, engineering, bridge staff. Should have had no problem fixing the beacon and keeping people safe. All killed within the same week, about a month after the beacon was repaired."

There was a long, weighty pause. "It's looking like he only activated the beacon because the men have come back ready to fight," Shepard said evenly.

There was nothing left to say. What had happened here was evil. Inexcusable. To his credit, Jacob didn't try to make an excuse. Instead, he carefully stowed the datapad in a pocket of his armor's cargo pants. His fingers shook. When he spoke, so did his voice, and his eyes were bright with righteous fury. "He let this happen, and now it's biting him in the ass. Nine years. Why didn't he set it right? I need to find this man."

Looking from Jacob to the women, Garrus didn't know what they would do when they got to Ronald Taylor. He didn't think any of the others knew either. But an unspoken understanding crackled between the four of them—one way or another, Ronald Taylor would pay.

* * *

 **A/N: Jacob's loyalty mission is one of the hardest for me to play Paragon. I can barely manage by focusing on compassion for Ronald Taylor's victims, but I wish there was an option to both express a desire to help them** _ **and**_ **shoot Ronald in the head. A rapist that became a murderer so he could be the only rapist around, and to keep everyone else from conveying knowledge of his crimes back to civilization? A weaselly coward that signaled for help only when planetary cycles and natural outrage finally came together and his crimes all backfired? Just sending the guy to prison, when his victims will have to deal with the years of trauma he put them through all the rest of their lives, has a bitterer taste than that Cerberus scientist involved with Akuze on Ontarom getting off. Being the good guy in the Mass Effect trilogy is often more rewarding in the long-term than the alternative. But sometimes it just isn't as satisfying.**

 **Too bad Garrus has given up Archangel. The people on Aeia could use an avenging angel.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	38. Exodus: Moses

**Moses: A spiritual leader in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the Exodus story, Moses was raised in the house of the pharaohs of Egypt but returned to his native Hebrew people later on God's order to deliver them from slavery. A rash and impulsive individual, the Moses of Judeo-Christian Scriptures once committed murder in anger and often lost his temper, but remained devoted to justice and responsible leadership throughout his life after he was called by God.**

 **In black American tradition in the United States, Moses became a powerful symbol of freedom, often a subject of spirituals that signaled resistance or escape, and identified with individuals who fought against slavery and oppression like Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King Jr.**

* * *

XXXVIII

Exodus: Moses

The exiled males were after Ronald Taylor too. It was probably why the LOKI mechs at the canyon exit had been programmed to fire on armed individuals on sight. Acting Captain Ronald Taylor had been taking precautions. The canyon exit had been blocked—several rocks collapsed across it to make it difficult for anyone to get closer to where Ronald Taylor was set up.

Fortunately, LOKI mechs were pieces of crap on a good day, and the ones here had been wearing out for ten years. It didn't take Garrus and the others long to find a faulty one that hadn't detonated when it had been destroyed. Garrus, Lawson, and Shepard worked together to rearm the short-circuited detonation sequence. Shepard set the mech up to explode on a delay, and in less than five minutes, they were through the canyon exit and moving north along the cliffs, back toward the seashore.

Before they had gone half a klick, their radios came on as someone hailed them over an open channel. "This is Captain Ronald Taylor," a human voice said, higher pitched than their Taylor's, but with a similar tone and accent. "Thank God you're here. My crew went insane. I only just got free."

Jacob exploded. "God damn it! It's really him!" _Despite all the evidence, he hoped there was another explanation here—that his father went insane on the toxic food after all or that another First Officer Ronald Taylor was in charge here when all this happened._ Garrus couldn't blame Taylor for that. Jacob was snapping with rage now, though, simmering like a storm. "'Just got free'?" he growled. "He's covering his ass."

"Look," Garrus said. He pointed ahead at a pile of bodies by a cliffside. There were four of them—one completely skeletonized, dry bones in a rotting uniform, years old. The other three were stinking, still actively decomposing. Maggots writhed in glistening, rotting cavities. No more than a year dead, and probably less than a few weeks.

"The old corpse was posed, like a warning," Garrus observed, seeing the skeletal arms resting on the breastbone, grinning down the canyon obscenely. "The new ones were left where they fell."

"When the Hunters started fighting back," Taylor growled.

"Stay sharp!" Shepard snapped, as three LOKIs marched into view and opened fire. She twisted her wrist, and one collapsed in a shower of blue sparks. Lawson projected a biotic barrier out, giving them some space from the fire. There was no cover, nowhere along the narrow path to move to outflank the mechs.

Garrus immediately fell into a crouch, diminishing the size of the target and steadying his arms at once. To the side, he saw Shepard flip the switch on the Locust to enable disruptive ammo on the gun. Taylor crushed a mech with his biotics, and Garrus fired on the other one. But more were coming.

Dated, failing LOKI mechs, but the environment was all on their side, and Garrus realized why the three Hunters had died right here. There was a grim twist to Shepard's mouth as she hacked into the systems of one of the mechs, turning it to fire on its fellows for them.

Miranda broke out into a sweat, holding the barrier in front of them. "We have to keep moving, Shepard," she gasped. "Charge them. Change the ground."

"Do it," Shepard agreed, switching to her pistol. "Can you cover us?"

"Just for a second," Lawson said. "Now!"

They exploded out from their position, Taylor and Shepard taking point. The LOKIs weren't expecting the tactic and couldn't recalculate for their velocity in time. "Please consider your aggressive actions," Garrus heard one say stupidly before he and Lawson hit it at the same time with overload programs.

They came out of the cliffs and onto another stretch of beach. There was an abandoned camp here, and finally, room to maneuver. Only four more mechs in sight, and they were dispatched in less than fifteen seconds now.

"Alright?" Shepard asked Lawson in a low voice.

"I'm fine, Shepard." Lawson pulled a high-calory nutrient bar out of a pouch attached to her waist, stripped off the wrapper, and took a bite. "We should be careful, though. They're just mechs, but he's positioned them well. I'll say this much for your father, Jacob. He knows how to set up an approach."

Taylor scowled and shook his head, and as if in answer to Lawson's remark, Ronald Taylor's voice came over the radio again. "I had to keep them busy," he said apologetically. "The strength of the Hunters is getting dangerous. Thank God you've come."

Of course, Ronald Taylor couldn't actually hear them. He was tracking their tech signals, maybe, but the open channel he was speaking over gave him no access to their transmissions. His salvaged equipment was ten years out of date anyway. He was only guessing what they were encountering and offering an excuse for it. But the excuse only made Jacob angrier. "He had his fun. Now he wants out. Son of a bitch."

"Watch out!" Miranda snapped.

On the other side of the beach, from another cliffside path, more preprogrammed mechs were coming their way.

This time, the fight was easier. The four of them fanned out through the camp, making use of abandoned crates, trees, and boulders on the beach for cover. Shepard set up a crossfire with Taylor, and Garrus stayed back with Lawson, hurling tech attacks at the LOKIs as they came into view.

 _For an exploration mission, the_ Gernsback _carried a lot of mechs._ Garrus wondered if the _Hugo Gernsback_ had also been tasked with securing the planet against competitors or holding it against Terminus pirates. Otherwise, the number of armed mechs that had apparently been in the cargo just didn't make sense.

After about two minutes, the mechs stopped coming again, and Taylor led the way down the cliffside path where they had come from. That was when they realized Ronald Taylor hadn't killed or exiled _all_ the male survivors from the _Gernsback_.

"Hunters!" a voice slurred. "Kill hunters!"

A SMG echoed off the cliffside, and Taylor put up the barrier this time. "It took years to train my guards," Ronald Taylor said over the radio. "I'm afraid you'll have to fight them to rescue me."

"Dammit," Shepard swore, with feeling. There were two makeshift stone columns ahead where the path opened up into another camp—probably Ronald Taylor's. About twelve meters away. "Sprint it," she said. "Find cover."

They ran. **77** . . . **43** . . . **15**!

Garrus burst into the final camp only to hear a deep mech voice grinding out, "Online."

"Heavy mech!" he screamed. "Get down!"

He dived into cover with a wild man in a Gernsback uniform. The man turned his gun on Garrus. Too late. Garrus had shoved the gun back into his chest, winded and disarmed him, and knocked him unconscious with the pistol's butt in half a second.

The other guards wouldn't be so easy to take alive. Garrus saw them, ranged around the campsite. Five more besides the one he had just taken out, and the heavy mech, firing its miniguns in an arc over the campsite.

Rockets slammed into the mech—Shepard's—she hadn't brought her heavier weapons. She hadn't thought they would need them. _And why would she?_

Garrus sent an overload program over the cover he crouched behind toward the mech, staying low so the poisoned guards couldn't catch him while his shields regenerated. He heard Jacob's shotgun firing—once, twice—saw biotics over stacked construction markers like pillars in the center of the camp.

Lawson's Locust sang. "Self . . . destruct . . . activated," the heavy mech slurred.

Garrus hit the dirt as it exploded in a wash of heat and flame.

There were two more guards left alive, standing on either side of the pillar he had noticed, back to back and firing out. No way to come at them peacefully. Garrus took a shot. Taylor took the other.

All four of them stood from their positions around the camp. The man by Garrus's side groaned. "We kill so . . . we can go home," he murmured, voice thick with the concussion. He reached for the gun, emptied of heat sinks and a meter away from him, then fell back into unconsciousness. A purple bruise was rising on his temple. Garrus hoped he lived. He wasn't sure he would.

Lawson was pale. Taylor's jaw was tight. There was a tic in it at the bottom of his cheek. Shepard closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. Now that they knew the men here were victims just as much as the women, "exiled" or manipulated like these, killing them felt dirtier. Wrong.

During the tour against Saren, there had been some colonists on Feros under the control of a sentient plant. Out of their right minds. Back then, when the colonists had gone hostile, they'd had some gas grenades to neutralize the colonists without killing them. _There weren't any gas grenades this time._

"Was anyone else able to take any of them alive?" Shepard asked, looking at Garrus's man.

No one answered. The waste of it hung over all of them. Jacob kicked a crate. "Throwing people away," he muttered. "Enough. I need to look my father in the eye and hear him justify this!"

The survivors had built a sort of door to Ronald Taylor's camp, like the statue in the women's settlement. It opened onto a hill that fell down to the sea. The four of them walked through it to confront the monster that had done all this. Jacob's father.

Ronald Taylor was standing on a balcony that had been built to look over the cliffs out to sea. He had his back to them at first, but when he heard them coming, he turned. Garrus had to make a conscious effort not to shoot him.

Ronald Taylor was a smaller man than his son, with rough stubble around his mouth and jaw that showed some gray and white. He was dressed in the same old, threadbare fatigues as the other survivors, but there was a snap in his dark eyes and an even intelligence in his face, completely absent from all the others. It made Garrus sick. Ronald Taylor had purchased that intelligence at the cost of his crew. And then taken advantage of them.

He spotted the N7 on Shepard's armor and immediately addressed himself to her, white teeth flashing in a grin. "You're here. I knew a real squad would blow through just fine." His eyes flicked up and down in a moment, taking Shepard in, and his grin widened. "Sorry if the mechs scuffed your pads. I'll get you something nice when we get back to Alliance space. I've gotta have some backpay comin'."

Garrus was revolted. He had to know they had seen the camp, seen _everything_ coming in. He opened his mouth, but Taylor beat him to it. "What about your crew, Acting Captain?" he demanded. His tone was overtly hostile.

Ronald Taylor glanced at his son, then looked back at Shepard. He didn't recognize Jacob. "Total loss," he said coolly. "Toxic food turned 'em wild. They propped me up here in some kind of ritual behavior. Waiting for a chance to signal has been hell."

"That's the best you can do?" Taylor challenged him.

Ronald Taylor raised his eyebrows. An expression of irritation crossed his face this time, and one of his fists half-clenched. He looked at Shepard again. "You let all your people talk back like that—uh—who are you, exactly?"

Shepard wasn't even looking at him. She'd walked straight past to the overlook and was standing there at parade rest, hands clasped behind her back. "Commander Shepard of the _Normandy_ ," she said curtly. She turned then, gesturing at each of them in turn. "Garrus Vakarian, Miranda Lawson. I believe you're acquainted with Mr. Taylor."

Ronald Taylor looked back at his seething son. This time he recognized him. His eyes went wide, and his face seemed to grow gray and old. "Taylor? Jacob. No. Not Jacob."

"Why not me?!" Jacob raged. "Would ten years of this look better to anyone else in the galaxy?" He punctuated 'this' with a wild gesture back in the direction of the camp and the _Gernsback_.

Ronald Taylor's head bowed. "You have to understand," he pleaded, "this isn't me. The realities of command, they change you. I wasn't ready for that." He looked up, a flicker of anger on his face showing now as he continued to try to justify himself to his son. "I made sure you were taught right before I left. I'd hoped to leave it at that."

Shepard had stepped forward now. Arms folded, weight on her back leg. "I'm not biting, Captain," she said. Her voice was cold. "At some point you chose to do this to your crew. You."

If she was cold, Taylor was still red hot. "What was that moment?" he asked his father. "I want to know that there was an actual reason!"

Ronald Taylor walked away, trying to put the accusations behind him. He spoke like he was talking to himself. "There was resistance to the plan. Mutiny. We had to take a hard line to keep order. Then things settled down." He shrugged. "As the decade set in, we made sure the crew were comfortable. Some even seemed happier. Ignorance is bliss, right? And they were grateful for guidance. Like an instinct." His mouth turned up, remembering. "Pure authority was . . . easy, at first. Months in, the effect lowered inhibitions. They got territorial. Rank, protocol, they couldn't understand." He glanced back at Jacob. "We had to establish dominance. After a while, the perks seemed . . . normal."

 _Perks_. The rape of maybe a dozen women incapable of consenting, women who shivered talking about him and who tried to protect themselves from his son. The murder or exile of any rivals or dissenters among the men. Brainwashing and enslavement. _Perks._

Taylor's biotics rippled across his skin. "That's it?! You created a harem and played king? Ten years in a juvenile fantasy?"

Ronald Taylor sighed. "I can't point to where it all went wrong. But when the beacon was ready, revealing what happened didn't seem like a good idea."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "You didn't feel any responsibility to get out of here for the sake of family?"

Jacob's father waved this off. "I gave him a good start," he said irritably. "He was a smart kid who was better off not following me. We figured that out a long time before I took jobs in deep space. After things escalated here, seemed best to just disappear off the galactic map."

Taylor snorted. "Till you needed someone to save your ass," he muttered.

Shepard stared at Ronald. "The other officers didn't agree," she said. It wasn't a question.

Ronald shrugged. "Anders found his conscience a little late to step back," he said bitterly. That had to have been the first log they found, Garrus thought. "He had an accident. Things got . . . tense. End of the day, I was the one with the mechs. I got a little basic in setting examples, but I was kind to my people once things settled down. Seemed like I'd earned some peace."

Jacob stepped forward. He jabbed a finger at his father. "You fought over people like they were toys, things."

A movement at the edge of the structure caught Garrus's attention. More hunters had followed their trail through the mechs to get here. They prowled at the edge of Ronald's camp, eyes bright and fevered, clutching their pistols and submachine guns in too-tight hands. Garrus signaled Shepard. She nodded and signaled him and Lawson to guard the perimeter.

For a moment, Garrus wasn't sure Lawson would obey. She looked half-inclined to hand Ronald Taylor over to the people he had abused for so long. But then she turned and raised her pistol, holding it on the hunters. Garrus did the same, and this time, the hunters held back, sensing, maybe, that whatever happened, the evil here was over.

"The stores from the ship couldn't last forever," Shepard was saying to Ronald Taylor. "You had to know this would end one day."

Ronald Taylor's answer was offensively blasé. "Dining for one can really stretch things out. Besides, I can think of a lot worse retirement plans than stripping down and joining the droolers. That was before the hunters, of course. Dumb or not, I'd feel it if they got their hands on me now. They want blood. I'd prefer to keep it."

Garrus heard Taylor scoff. "It's all about you. Everything."

"What triggered the males to change and threaten you?" Shepard wanted to know.

There was a pause before Ronald answered. "This planet has some strange cycles to it," he said finally. "I've seen some plants around I never saw before. Odd weather. Maybe some just adapted a little too well."

Taylor laughed. It had a wild sound to it. "And if you treat them like animals, big shock! They become animals."

Garrus watched Jacob out of the corner of his eye, still keeping the hunters covered. Jacob was incredulous, furious. Dangerous. Garrus knew Taylor could be rash, impulsive. He was a decent man and a reliable soldier, but he had a temper, and his discipline didn't always outweigh his impatience or his anger. _Well. He got fed up with Alliance bureaucracy and joined Cerberus. He knows what they are, but as uncomfortable as their policies make him, he still hasn't left._

Biotics flickered around Taylor's body.

 _Don't do anything stupid, Jacob. He ought to be shot. But if you do it, you'll never forgive yourself. If we do it or let these hunters have him, you'll never forgive us._

 _. . . Damn. I sound like Shepard._

Shepard spoke to Jacob directly, her voice calm and controlled again now. "We can help these people," she told him. "Cerberus can have ships here in days and pull everyone out."

Jacob's biotics surged, and he raised his pistol and leveled it at Ronald Taylor's left eye. Ronald Taylor stared up at his son, looking lost, old, small, and pathetic. "He's not worth the fuel to haul him out or the air he's breathing," Jacob said from between his teeth.

Then his biotics died. He lowered his gun. "He's damn lucky I don't think he's even worth pulling the trigger." He was disgusted, but the reckless, righteous anger was under control now. "I don't know who you are, because you're not any father I remember."

Shepard's eyes were like shutters. "We'll secure him for an Alliance court. For every year here, he'll have ten to think about it."

Jacob shook his head. "Give him all the time in the galaxy. The man who did this doesn't know right from wrong."

As Lawson radioed Niels to give him a rendezvous position and have the _Normandy_ send the call to Cerberus and Shepard's Alliance contacts, Ronald Taylor let Shepard take him into custody. Garrus continued to cover the hunters. "I'm sorry, Jacob," he heard the man say to his son, quietly. "I did the best I could."

Jacob Taylor laughed in his father's face—a harsh, broken sound. "I'm ten years past believing that."

* * *

The _Normandy_ stayed in the Alpha Draconis system for four more days, until Alliance compassion transports arrived to evacuate every one of the survivors from the _Hugo Gernsback_ and place Ronald Taylor under formal arrest. The women were easy to move; they couldn't get into the evac shuttles fast enough. Trained military medics had to take the hunters out with tranquilizers. They didn't understand.

Shepard spoke with the xenobiologist that came with the Alliance to give her chemical data the beacon VI had on the planetary flora. Professor Solus had also collected samples from the planet and shared some of his initial findings. The three of them were hopeful that the Alliance could synthesize a treatment to reverse the neural decay the _Gernsback_ survivors had sustained in their decade on what their expedition had believed was a colony world suited to human habitation. The _Gernsback_ crash on Aeia would go down with the other survival horror stories that filled the histories of spacing, and taught colonists a little more each time. But even if the survivors one day recovered from the neural decay, they would never get that decade back, or what Ronald Taylor had taken from them.

It turned out that Lawson had been the informant that had sent them to Aeia, that she'd come across the location of the _Gernsback_ crash site among all the other intelligence data she processed for Cerberus. She had tried to keep her tip to Jacob anonymous. It had been a security breach for her to tell him. The whole thing came out when Taylor went to the Illusive Man after the mission asking where the information had come from, and filtered through scuttlebutt after that.

Garrus thought hard for a while after Tali told him.

He was still thinking about it when he went off duty for the evening meal the day they left Aeia's orbit to make the days-long journey across star systems to the mass relay. He walked out of the battery and caught sight of Shepard, just getting up to leave. She looked tired, but there was a satisfaction in the lines of her face. She knew they had done good here, and she felt good about it.

He thought things had been a little awkward between them since Pragia, but it also felt like something had thawed this last mission, or maybe since the shuttle bay beforehand. He waved her down, and she paused by Gardner's station. She'd turned her tray in already, but she waited for him to get there.

Gardner saw him, greeted him, and changed his gloves to serve Garrus his meal. He didn't always remember that. It wasn't an issue for Garrus, of course, but Gardner had had to remake Tali's meals more than once, and twice someone who ate after one of them had had a minor reaction to dextro residue. _Ah, the logistics of interspecies space travel._

"Have you talked to Lawson?" Garrus asked Shepard in an undertone.

Shepard focused on him. "Not since rounds yesterday, and not about anything in particular. Anything I should know?"

Garrus shrugged. "Nothing you don't know already, probably. She sent us down there, and she broke protocol to do it. No doubt about it, it was a good thing we went, but you have to wonder why she did it. I'm sure Jack would be interested."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. Mindful of EDI and the ears in the mess hall, she didn't strike up a conversation about the ramifications of what Garrus had said, but he saw she understood them. Why was Cerberus's bitch suddenly tugging at the leash? It was the first time any of them had seen Miranda Lawson be anything less than perfectly professional. She protected Cerberus's interests and followed Cerberus's policies to the letter on everything else—why break the rules for Jacob's father? It could just be Jacob, of course. Taylor and Lawson were close. As close as Lawson ever was to anyone, anyway. She couldn't have had any more idea of what they would find on Aeia than the rest of them had. But if Lawson had been willing to go against Cerberus once to do what was right—in a small way, true, but still—then that was probably something they should know. And something they could work with.

"Could be a conversation I need to have with Miranda," Shepard said casually. She reached up and clasped Garrus's shoulder in silent thanks for the tip, and Garrus turned toward Gardner for his food.

Shepard left, and Garrus took his food and scanned the mess hall. Often, he ate with Tali or Goto, sometimes with the professor, Hawthorne, Rolston, or Niels. But Tali hadn't made it down to the mess yet tonight, and Garrus saw Taylor sitting alone near the edge of the dining area. He tipped his head at Jacob first to make sure he was up for company, and when Taylor gestured to the seat opposite him, made his way over and sat down.

"Jacob."

"Garrus. Thanix still hanging in there?"

"It hasn't melted down on us just yet. Probably just a matter of time."

"The amount of time you spend calibrating that thing . . ." Taylor shook his head. "Have to wonder if it was worth the investment."

"It will be," Garrus promised. "The Hierarchy developed the technology from Sovereign's weapons, and the galaxy had never seen anything like what that thing could do. It's fussy, sure. First models of a new technology, there are always bugs to work out. But properly aimed, the Thanix can cut through barriers and shielding like they aren't there. We're getting to the place where we'll need that."

"Feels like we're coming close to the end, doesn't it?" Jacob agreed. "Everyone in it and committed, all this extra training Shepard's doing. Don't guess there's a lot between here and the Relay. I'm ready. Are you?"

Garrus turned his fork over in his hand then answered honestly. "The Collectors need to die. As much for their own sake as for what they're doing to the colonists for the Reapers. What I'm concerned about is what comes after."

"Assuming we live," Jacob joked darkly.

Garrus paused. Then, deliberately, he said, "There's two ways this plays out. One—we all die trying to take out the Collectors. Maybe our mission succeeds and we just don't come back. Maybe we fail. Either way, there's a lot more to do after the Collectors die. We can guess the Collectors aren't the only tools the Reapers are using. We can guess the Reapers will come at the rest of the galaxy some other way. But we aren't around anymore to fight them."

Jacob grimaced, acknowledging the point. "Thought you were doing something about that, though. Miranda said she thought you might've been taking some video back on that Collector ship."

Lawson had been upset on the Collector ship. Garrus was somewhat surprised she had noticed, but he took the news in stride. "I'm doing what I can. I can send my dad, the executor back on the Citadel, everyone else I know who might listen to me a big, fat video right before we go through the Relay. I think I'm going to. Doesn't mean they'll believe me, or be able to do anything about it even if they do."

Taylor poked at his food, eyes dark. "It's some kind of bullshit, Garrus," he said finally. "We're the best people in the galaxy to do something about the Reapers, now or later. If we don't act now, who else is gonna do it? If we act now, we may lose our chance of acting later. Bullshit." He looked up at Garrus. "You think we have a shot of surviving?"

"I don't know," Garrus admitted. "But you can bet this mission will be a walk in the park compared to what comes next."

"That's the truth," Taylor agreed. "I don't know, Garrus. Knew going in that this was probably a one-way trip. Signed on anyway. Someone had to take out the Collectors. Might as well be me. Then I found out about the _Gernsback_. Hard to die then, without finding some answers. Closure, you know? Kinda wish I hadn't found out what I did."

"All right?" Garrus asked simply.

Taylor's eyes were distant, and his body was tense all over. "It is what it is. My father did what he did. It doesn't have to change who I am or what I'm about. But it's some kind of messed up, is all I'm saying. Was surprised no one else shot that fool in the head. Specially you. No offense."

Garrus was quiet for a moment. When he thought about what Jacob's father had done, he was still almost too angry to speak. Certainly to say anything that might help Jacob now. Finally, he said, "Remember back on Illium, when Lawson's friend Niket sold her and her sister out to their father?"

"Yeah," Jacob said, nodding. He saw where this was going.

"Lawson wanted to kill him, to protect Oriana and to punish Niket for betraying her, but Shepard wouldn't let her, and you said she made the right call. Sure, the guy ended up dying anyway, but Lawson didn't kill him— _we_ didn't kill him, and that mattered."

"Miranda wouldn't have liked it. Maybe then, but not later," Jacob agreed. "Whatever he turned into, he was her friend. Once. You're saying it was the same with my father?"

"Not the same," Garrus admitted. "Niket was taking a payout, but I think he still wanted what he thought was best for Oriana. Your father . . ." he trailed off. _Is a murdering rapist_ , was the only real way to finish that sentence. _He's shown zero remorse for his actions, only—a little—for the way you feel about them, and if his life hadn't been in immediate danger, he would have kept on the way he has for the past decade for the rest of his life._ But Jacob knew all of that. "Like you said, he did what he did," he finished lamely. "But he's still your father. If anyone ever needed a bullet to the brain, he does. But it wouldn't have been right for you to fire it, and if we had fired it for you—or left him to the hunters, maybe—you would have had a problem with it. Maybe not now, but later."

Jacob considered this. "You're probably right. Would've been satisfying in the moment, though." He shoveled the last bit of his meal into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. He stood. "See you around, Garrus." He paused, then looked back. "Thanks for checking in. Not a lot of people 'round here have had the guts, after what happened." He knocked once on the table, then walked away. Garrus finished the rest of his meal by himself.

* * *

 **A/N: So, one of a couple of really messed up loyalty missions in** _ **ME2**_ **. I'm not sure about this chapter, but I hope you guys enjoyed.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	39. Michael and Gabriel

**Michael: the archangel most often associated with the military. Michael is referenced multiple times in the Bible as fighting spiritual foes to assist the people of God, and in the Book of Revelation as a commander that leads the angel armies against Satan. In John Milton's** _ **Paradise Lost**_ **, Michael appears in this role. In Roman Catholic traditions, Michael is the angel of death—not the being responsible for the death of the firstborn in the Passover, but rather the being that appears at death to escort souls to heaven. Michael is also the patron saint of police officers.**

 **Gabriel: the archangel most often identified as the "herald angel." Gabriel, more than any other angel in Judeo-Christian Scripture and tradition, is the messenger of God. In the book of Daniel, Gabriel interprets the visions of the titular character. In the Bible's New Testament, Gabriel announces the births of both Jesus and John the Baptist, and he is commonly identified with the trumpeter that announces the resurrection of the dead in the end times in the Book of Revelation.**

* * *

XXXIX

Michael and Gabriel

After leaving the Rosetta Nebula, Shepard set a course back to Omega. Garrus knew this was it. Of course, the Reaper IFF they would need to navigate the relay was located in the Hawking Eta cluster, but after going there, there would be no guarantee they would have a chance to check the ship over before the relay. They might have to move fast. It made sense to dock one last time before the jump.

Garrus's nerves were tight bundles underneath his breast bone and in his gut. He checked his guns seven times each and ran the Thanix through his most stringent simulations. He had a headache by the time Shepard came by on her rounds, about forty-eight hours out from Omega.

He smiled to see her. "Shepard. Need me for something?"

She leaned against the door frame. "Not as such. How you doing?"

Garrus nodded at the gun. "Checking over a few things. I want to make sure we're ready for what's ahead. Whatever happens with the Collectors or the Reapers or whoever else comes after us, I know we'll get the job done, but keeping the gun in top condition can't hurt things."

Shepard walked into the battery. The door shut behind her. She seemed amused. "Hold it. You think we'll find something worse than Collectors or Reapers out here? I mean, I know we're at war with all the major merc organizations in the Terminus, but we seem to be doing all right."

Garrus shrugged. "I like to expect the worst. There's a small chance I'll be pleasantly surprised."

Shepard sat down on an ammo crate by the workbench he cleaned his guns at. Garrus looked down at the console to hide his smile. Shepard on the ammo crate. Somehow, it seemed their mere proximity ought to cause a massive explosion. _They think the most dangerous thing in here is the Thanix._

Shepard looked thoughtful. "I couldn't do this without you, Garrus," she said. Her voice was quiet.

Garrus shifted. He'd heard Shepard talk like this once before, right before he left the _Normandy SR-1_. He hadn't wanted to hear it then, and he didn't want to hear it now. Back then, the Commander Shepard mythos was just starting to wear off.

The truth was, Commander Shepard had an impossible job. She had to save the galaxy from monsters most of them didn't even believe in. To do it, she had to be perfect. Invincible. Infallible. That was what the Council, citizens all over the galaxy, and almost everyone in her crew needed her to be.

The C-Sec kid Garrus had been once, hungry to bring down a Spectre he _knew_ was dirty, had wanted Commander Shepard to be perfect too. He had looked at her and looked for that Spectre ideal—someone that could stand where Saren couldn't, free to pursue justice no matter what, outside of the red tape and bureaucracy that held C-Sec down, and so incorruptible the lack of restrictions wouldn't matter, no matter what his father said.

Garrus had looked, and he'd seen another person. The bravest person he'd ever known or heard of, sure. Strong. Brilliant. Dangerous. But she was capable of failure. She lost her temper and missed things and made mistakes.

But if she was going to be what the rest of the galaxy needed her to be, someone had to hold her up, watch her back, catch her when she fell, and believe in her, hard enough that everyone else did too, no matter what. Garrus had stepped into the job on instinct, before he really knew what he was doing, or that by doing so, _he_ would have to give up that comfortable belief in Commander Shepard, the paragon, and take his chances believing in the flesh-and-blood, breakable reality.

He had just started to understand what had happened when he left the _SR-1_. There had been no going back once he had, and even knowing what he knew now, he didn't want to go back. It was an enormous honor and privilege that Shepard let him be there for her.

It was also almost as impossible as being Commander Shepard. And sometimes, the weight of her faith—and the fear of letting her down—hit him like the weight of a starship without the mass effect. "I should get a raise," he joked.

There was a light in Shepard's eyes that said she understood exactly what she asked of him, without ever saying a thing. "I'll mention it at the next board meeting," she told him.

Garrus felt a rush of affection for Shepard, his commander, his friend. Spirits, there was so much he wanted to say to her. He couldn't. But there was just no _time_. "It's strange going into a suicide mission on a human ship," he observed idly. "Your people don't prepare for high-risk operations the way turians do."

Shepard tilted her head. "Would've thought you'd be an old hand at high-risk operations on human ships. I mean, think about tracking Saren to Ilos!"

Garrus acknowledged the point. "Sure, but that was quick. We raced out, landed, blew up some geth, and saved the galaxy. This time we've got Miranda, and Cerberus, and that AI all telling us what we're up against. I think I preferred blind optimism." _And I hate being blind._

Shepard's mouth quirked. "Says the pessimist. Well, how about determined optimism? How does that sound? I told you: we're going to get through this."

Somewhere in the last few days, Garrus had started to believe her. He didn't know if it was cowardice—if his brain had just shut down, unprepared to really die, or if he just had that much confidence in her belief. _But is it really so bad to believe we won't_ have _to die for the cause, against all odds?_ _If I could get back to Palaven . . ._

"Well," Garrus said. "The Collectors killed you once, and all it did was piss you off." He looked back at the gun, considering. Maybe it wouldn't be a suicide mission, but he knew that whatever happened, they were in for a hell of a fight. "But we have to be prepared. We're going into an unmapped area against Reaper husks that don't feel pain or fear—and they have more advanced technology than we do. We're going to lose people. No way around that."

Shepard looked at him, and he saw her agreement with him in her face. He inclined his head. "Not a happy analysis, I know," he murmured. "Don't worry. I won't spread it around. And I'm with you, regardless."

"I know," Shepard said. "Garrus, you ever regret leaving C-Sec or the turian military?"

 _Do you regret me?_ she meant. Looking at her, Garrus saw a darkness like a mirror behind her eyes, the reflection of every doubt he'd ever had about command.

 _I'm not sure I can do this. Why do these people think I can do this? If you die, it's on me._

There was no real way to ease the responsibility a commander felt for her people. But he could tell her it was his choice to be here. "Not for a minute," he promised. "I may be a useless dropout as far as the Hierarchy's concerned—but I'd rather take a stand when I hear a bad order. Say what needs to be said when it needs to be said. Do what needs to be done. There's no point in staying quiet and polite when the galaxy is at stake."

That made her laugh. "Too bullheaded," she teased him. "And too restless." She leaned back against the wall with one shoulder, relaxing. "So how do turian crews get ready for high-risk missions?"

Leaning against the bulkhead like that, Shepard clearly meant to stay a while. Just like old times. Except back then, that last day was the only time he'd seen Shepard this open, and she'd been half drunk. She had given him his commendations to C-Sec and the Council, asked him to be her partner, and said goodbye, and looking back now, Garrus was almost certain she had only managed it _because_ she'd been half drunk.

Things had changed since the _SR-1_. Shepard was sober now. Garrus watched her out of his peripherals. "With violence, usually," he said. He managed to keep the tone she would understand casual, but he could hear his subvocals slipping. "Turian ships have more operational discipline than your Alliance, but fewer personal restrictions. Our commanders run us tight, and they know we need to blow off steam. But then I figure you know that. Last week was hardly Alliance protocol."

It was a gamble, mentioning the looser personal restrictions in the fleet, bringing up their sparring session in the shuttle bay last week. But Shepard just shrugged. "I did some research when you joined the crew to help us take down Saren. I wanted you to feel at home on the _Normandy_. Of course, back then, I figured I'd be supervising your fight with Ash or Pressly or one of the others, not fighting you myself. I was a little surprised by some of the stuff I turned up back then. It's strange to think of crewmen fighting each other before a mission."

"We're careful, and there's usually a referee," Garrus pointed out. "Nobody is going to risk an injury that interferes with the mission. And it's a good way to settle grudges amicably." He thought Shepard understood that part of it, at least, considering how she had challenged him, and who she had originally thought he might be fighting on the _SR-1_ —the more xenophobic members of her former crew. But she still didn't understand the rest of it.

 _A little more, maybe?_ Garrus paced away and back, nerves getting the best of him, even coming at it sideways like this. "I remember right before one mission we were about to hit a batarian pirate squad. Very risky. This recon scout and I had been at each other's throats. Nerves, mostly. She suggested we settle it in the ring."

Shepard smirked. "I assume you took her down gently?" There was no doubt there; she was absolutely certain he had won the fight. It made him smile.

"Actually, she and I were the top-ranked hand-to-hand specialists on the ship," he admitted. He was better now than he had been then, but at eighteen, it had been one of the hardest fights he had ever fought up to that point. "I had reach, but she had flexibility. It was brutal. After nine rounds, the judge called it a draw. There were a lot of unhappy betters in the training room." Garrus's eyes flicked to Shepard. "We, ah, ended up holding a tiebreaker in her quarters. I had reach, but she had flexibility. More than one way to work off stress, I guess."

For a long, long moment, Shepard didn't respond. She didn't blink. She didn't blush. She didn't laugh or display any sign of jealousy.

 _Wait. What does human jealousy even look like?_

But _something_ had gotten through to her. _Finally._ She sat very still, as if digesting the story, and eventually, her lips curved up, and she sat up and stood.

Shepard stretched, long and languid, reaching for the ceiling, and Garrus tried not to look at the length of her torso. "You need to work off stress, Garrus? I guess we could go another half dozen rounds in the hold if you didn't get enough the other day. Who knows? Maybe I'll break a sweat this time."

Her tone was light, teasing. Garrus's heart sank. It was either the kindest rejection he'd ever experienced, or she still didn't get it.

 _And if you can't tell the difference, you probably shouldn't be doing this dance anyway._ He tried to smile. "I've got a feeling that if you did, we'd just end up adding my name to the list of people you've knocked on their asses, Shepard."

Shepard tilted her head, expression sharp. "As I recall, you gave about as good as you got."

Garrus turned away from her. It felt like the only thing left for him to do was come right out and proposition her, and that wasn't his place.

 _It's just as well_. _She's human._ _It wouldn't have worked anyway, probably. Be glad she was too dense or too smart—don't know which; doesn't matter—to let you screw up the best relationship of your life. Cut your losses, and get over it._ "Thanks, but no thanks, Shepard," he said. He knew his voice was flat. He looked at the numbers on the battery console, willing the tasks to move toward completion faster, willing Shepard out of the battery.

Her gloved hand gently landed along the top of the console, forcing his attention up the long, lean, and muscled arm encased in its science uniform and back to her face. And she was wearing an expression he had never seen on her face before—looking up at him from beneath her lashes, then letting her eyes go wide and innocent.

"You don't want to spar?" she asked, and her tone matched that face. Garrus tensed. Suddenly, he felt like a mark in a kill zone, with his back to a perfectly positioned sniper. "Then how are we to get rid of your stress?" Her eyebrows rose, and she brought her hand to her forehead in an exaggerated manner, as if she were castigating herself for her stupidity. "Oh, I'm an idiot," she murmured. "You didn't tell me about the relaxed personal restrictions on turian ships because you wanted to spar. Or take that story about the recon scout all the way to its . . ." she paused exquisitely, ". . . completion."

 _Spirits, she's flirting with me._ Sure, she flirted with him all the time. But this was different. There was intention behind this, keen and focused. _When you tweak a tarlasz's tail . . ._

Shepard cocked her eyebrows at him. "Some reason you wanted me to know?" she asked, in the same sweet, too-innocent tone. Garrus swallowed.

All at once, the coy, predatory expression and posture melted away into a much more familiar wry, self-assured amusement. "I spent a lot of time on the streets, Vakarian," Shepard told him in her normal voice. "I know a hook when I see one."

It was a clear rebuke, if a teasing one. He'd gone too far. Garrus stepped back, flooded with instant regret and panic. "Ah . . . Shepard, I didn't mean—"

Shepard held up a hand, stopping him cold. "I didn't say you were fishing in the Presidium reservoir," she said quietly.

That caught him off guard for a moment. He hadn't expected her to come right out and say it. He let out a careful, shaking breath. "Oh. So you _do_ have a weakness for men with scars. I did wonder . . ."

Shepard interrupted again, shaking her head. "I don't know about that, but for whatever reason, I seem to be into you." That was even more direct, dismissing his attempt at levity, making her interest explicit with no room for misinterpretation.

Garrus stared. After months of uncertainty, Shepard's blunt admission was almost too much to process. _She_ is _the bravest person I've ever known or heard of._

Gun-metal gray eyes held his. "So how about it? You and me, working off some stress together? I promise you: I got plenty flexibility."

Garrus remembered her stretching, moments ago. His mouth went dry. "I don't doubt it," he managed. His subvocals were all over the place. He couldn't have controlled them if he tried. It was all he could do to stand up straight, shaking off the haze of shock to answer her. "There's nobody in this galaxy I respect more than you, and, I mean, if we can figure out a way to make it work, then why the hell not, right? So yeah . . . _definitely_."

A mask of bravado he hadn't realized she had been wearing gave way to relief, and Garrus blinked as Shepard sagged and laughed. "I thought I was going insane," she admitted. "Hell, maybe I still am. Why the games, Garrus? Why didn't you just say something?"

She looked up at him, waiting for his answer. Garrus tapped his talons on the console. As if the ten fingers; long, pointed nose; flat voice; and mounds of shining hair weren't reminder enough she was alien. They were going to have some translation issues here, he could tell. Without stepping out of line and making an outright advance on his CO, he had no idea how he could have been more obvious the past couple months. And it looked like Shepard had missed or doubted almost all of it. "I thought I just did," he said.

 _In fairness, you did just wonder what human jealousy looks like._ It had taken him a few seconds to realize she was flirting with him like she meant it. He sighed. _And I thought turian women were hard to figure out. Nothing's ever easy._ "I thought I was going insane too, Shepard," he confessed. "If I was wrong—well, no one wants to be the xenophiliac ass to ruin everything by hitting on an uninterested alien friend. Saw that sometimes in C-Sec. It wasn't pretty."

Shepard scowled at him. "You were fine letting _me_ be the xenophiliac ass to ruin everything," she complained. She shoved at his breastplate, pushing him away. "God, you _are_ wrong. We _both_ are. We're a dozen kinds of wrong for even considering this!"

Garrus froze. His gut twisted. He took a step back, but Shepard caught his eye, holding him. She smiled ruefully. "Don't want to take it back, though."

Garrus watched her, assessing. Then he let out a nervous, shuddering sigh of relief. She meant it. "Good. Me neither. So I'll see you?"

"Oh, you'll see me," Shepard said, and something of the flirtatious tone she'd adopted to tease him earlier had returned to her voice. But this time, she wasn't teasing him. There was a pointed promise to the innuendo that dug and blazed beneath his hide, even without subvocals.

The feeling Garrus had now was closer to what he'd felt after taking Sovereign out than it was to what it had been like when Kyra Kilkairos had agreed to go get _restouk_ and go to the vid store with him after school. When Kyra Kilkairos had agreed to go out with him, as soon as she had left, he had whooped and run around the block three times, then proceeded to tell his mother and every boy he knew. In fact, her acceptance had been much better than the actual date, when he had realized that Kyra Kilkairos, the prettiest girl in the class ahead of his when he was eleven years old, was actually intolerably shallow and stupid—interested more in gossip and art than gun design and the plots of his favorite serial vids.

 _Now_ , Garrus's stomach was swooping. His head was spinning, and his mind was racing. He still felt like cheering, sure, but he also felt a simultaneous need to sit down. He was suddenly so exhausted he thought he could probably sleep for a week.

Shepard was watching him with those gray eyes, and he could swear she _knew_. She smirked. Spirits, the woman _had_ him.

She turned on her heel and strode out of the battery without a backward glance. Garrus watched her go. As the door closed behind her, he fell back against the battery console.

 _Damn._

It hadn't all been in his head. Shepard genuinely was attracted to him, and furthermore, contrary to everything he could have expected from former Alliance, she was willing to act on it.

Then the reality that was the culmination of everything that had just happened hit him: he was going to have sex with a human.

As if he didn't have enough to be self-conscious about.

It occurred to Garrus that he couldn't remember a single thing about human anatomy from xenostudies that wasn't related to how to take them down in combat. He did know that as a species, humans were sexually more similar to turians than they were to oviparous salarians or krogan or to the pansexual, parthenogenetic asari, for example. Certainly than they were to species that weren't even bipedal or land-dwelling. But he had no specific idea of what sex meant to their species, biologically or culturally. When it came down to it, would Shepard think he was just too strange?

 _Will_ I _think_ she _is?_

That was an even more disturbing thought: that his attraction to Shepard might be purely spiritual after all, and in the end, his body just wouldn't respond to hers.

 _More scope for awkwardness and humiliation here than in any stupid thing you've done yet, Vakarian._ Garrus shook his head and laughed aloud.

At least he wasn't worried about the Collectors anymore.

* * *

 **A/N: For those of you following both this story and the Disaster Zone series, this chapter is concurrent with the seventh chapter in** _ **Disaster Zone: Resurrection**_ **, "Dozen Kinds of Wrong."**

 **Short chapter, but there's a lot here. Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	40. Demon of the Night Winds: The Underworld

XL

Demon of the Night Winds: The Underworld

They docked on Omega. Garrus worked with Goto, Massani, and the professor to help Shepard arrange for the most trustworthy technicians to give the ship a final detail before they launched after the Reaper IFF. There were a lot of shifty operators on Omega, but there were a few of them who wouldn't charge through the nose, try to fabricate additional work, or install spyware during a job. Not that most people would be able to pull one over on them, with Tali and EDI onboard, but arguing down the cheats was tedious.

Garrus didn't worry too much about buffing out the Archangel emblem on his armor before meeting with the technicians. The first day back on Omega, he saw Archangel graffiti in five different places and some version of the symbol sewn on three different shirts. No reason for anyone on Omega to think he was the actual Archangel.

And he knew Omega, every dark alley and garbage-filled side street. He knew the shadows. He knew the sick, pulsing rhythm beating out from Afterlife like an oversized heartbeat. He knew which species went to which bars and where all the major gangs were strongest. He blended into the faceless crowds in the dim, windowless corridors of the station. Next to Massani, Goto, or Solus, he looked like just another heavy, pulled down by gravity into this cesspit at the center of the Terminus. He hung back from Shepard, just in case, but he never left her line of sight. He saw her worry about him. He saw the pickpockets and predators note her bright hair and expensive equipment, too, while she was watching him, and didn't know if she noticed them or not. They always saw the N7 engraved on her armor and the smooth, deadly grace of her gait and decided to look for an easier mark, but even when Shepard didn't ask him to come along with her to meet the people she had in mind to work on the ship, he usually found a reason to do so, just in case.

The day after they arrived on Omega, after one last conversation with a specialist mechanic with Solus, Garrus walked back to the _Normandy_ with the professor. "Garrus," Mordin said, with unusual delicacy. "Wondered if we could speak. Personal matters."

A chill shot down Garrus's spine."I've got time," he told the salarian, forcing calm. He followed Mordin to the lab on the bridge deck. After they were safely inside the salarian's workspace, free of Lawson's bugs, if not of all EDI's sensors, Garrus faced the professor across the work table, braced for the worst. "Have you heard from Palaven?"

Solus blinked. Once. Twice. Then he got it. "About mother? No! No! Apologize! Never thought you would assume had news about mother! Doctor-patient confidentiality sacred! Study would not release information to unaffiliated agent, regardless of prior relationship!"

He seemed genuinely horrified. Garrus started to breathe again. "Mom's alright?"

Solus walked to a cabinet by his lab sink. He withdrew a glass, filled it with water, and handed it to Garrus. It was a secondary apology, Garrus realized. He wasn't thirsty, but he took the glass.

"Mother has _terminal_ , _degenerative_ neural disease," Mordin said gently. "Far from alright. But news of improved quality of life, new findings, will come from _facility_ , from _family_ —not me. Apologies," he said again.

Garrus nodded. _Should've known that. Stupid to think . . ._ "It's fine, professor," he said. "My family and I appreciate everything you've done. Well. If you weren't trying to give me a heart attack just now, what did you want to talk about?"

Mordin smiled, and stepped back. "Medical matters on the _Normandy_ ," he explained. "Sexual activity normal stress release for turians and humans. Certain similarities in culture, values—despite troubled history. Past association with Commander Shepard also heightens attraction—"

Garrus's hand slipped on the glass Mordin had given him. He caught it before it hit the lab table, but water still slopped over the edge. "Crap!" he choked, but the water hadn't spilled on any datapads or experiments. He coughed loudly until he had regained his composure. "Sorry! Sorry! What?! _How_ —"

Solus's eyes danced. _He's laughing, the sneaky bastard_. "Experienced xenobiologist and geneticist," the professor explained. "Trained in interspecies observation. Attraction frequencies in subharmonics during party banter. Physical space between subjects measurably smaller than between unattracted members of both species. Also—" he shrugged— " _Normandy_ gossip."

It was strange, how curiosity and ignorance could keep him on his feet despite his strong desire the floor would open up and swallow him. "Wonderful," Garrus muttered. " _Everyone's_ talking about it." He should have seen it coming, really. At this point, Wrex, Krios, and Lawson had all said something. He had hoped not to disrupt the crew.

But Mordin shook his head. "Speculation only," he promised. "No evidence, no proof. Good thing. Would not advise unprepared sexual encounter." The amusement left his face then. He plucked the glass from Garrus's talons, ran a swab over the rim, and transferred it to a slide in less than three seconds. "Amino-acid incompatibility _serious_ concern," he said. "Ingestion of tissue could provoke allergic reaction. Anaphylactic shock possible."

Oddly, Garrus felt more comfortable talking about the science of it. "Only if the participants have that allergy," he pointed out, letting Solus scan the DNA sample anyway. Mordin was a doctor like he was a salarian. He couldn't turn it off, and Garrus knew what he would find. "Saw some cross-contamination in C-Sec. Usually it was a matter for the hospital and not the cops—someone eating the wrong entrée at a business dinner rather than any deliberate poisoning. Only about half the human and turian population has any reaction at all, and the severity of the allergy varies even then."

Garrus waited while Solus ran a simulation, probably projecting an encounter with levo amino acids. When the simulation finished, the professor looked up. "Shepard tried the dextro rations on the _SR-1_ once or twice on a dare," Garrus told him. "She doesn't have any reaction either."

"No," Solus agreed. "Ran her DNA sample after visit last night. But only first and worst issue." His omni-tool lit up again. "Forwarding advice booklet to your terminal. Valuable diagrams, positions comfortable for both species, overview of erogenous zones. Human bodies have advantages—environmental adaptability, temperature flexibility, energy reserves, impressive fine dexterity—Amazing! But lack natural defenses or weapons comparable to turians." The professor looked him right in the eye. Garrus was twice the salarian's mass at least, but now Solus made him acknowledge that he didn't have two centimeters on the professor in height. "Unfiled talons can cause damage to human tissue. Plating can chafe! _Imperative_ to consider safety and comfort of human partner."

Garrus looked hard at Mordin. The professor seemed almost as worked up as he'd been on Tuchanka. "I don't want to hurt her, Mordin," he said. "And I always file my talons. Hard to work on a console or fire a gun otherwise. I'll look at the information. Shepard and I have been talking, but nothing's happened yet. And you can trust that I'm even more invested in making sure I don't screw this up than you are."

Solus regarded him for a long moment. Then he seemed to relax. "Not just my patient or commander of mission," he admitted, referring to Shepard. "My colleague. My friend. Want her safe." He smiled then. "Approve of you, actually. Can compensate for sexual obstacles; _romantic_ compatibility more difficult to adjust."

Garrus forced a smile. _That'll be the day_. "Slow down there, professor. Shepard hasn't said anything about romance, but she's said a bit about avoiding attachment in the military."

Mordin didn't seem surprised. He nodded. "Avoid loss, grief. Psycho-emotional defensive barrier. Sensible. Understandable. Still—close to you, Garrus. Different cultural, psychological, moral perspectives. Similar goals and values. Challenge and improve each other. Mutual trust, respect. Admiration." He spread his hands wide. "Salarians usually incapable of sustaining courtship emotions beyond mating period—occasionally form bonds with asari." He shrugged. "Lifespans, social structures of humans and turians fundamentally similar. Dating, pair-bonds—temporary and permanent. Never underestimate biological, cultural influence."

 _He_ does _approve of me_ , Garrus realized. It was probably the most ringing endorsement of a relationship between him and Shepard the salarian scientist could give.

 _In the end it doesn't matter; what happens between me and Shepard will be up to Shepard._ Still, it was nice to know. "I think there was some encouragement in there," Garrus joked. "Very _strange_ encouragement, but thanks. Any other advice, professor?"

Solus smiled. "Cerberus skin weave makes Shepard more durable than average humans, but can supply oils or ointments to help reduce discomfort. References to demonstration vids."

Garrus chuckled. "Porn."

"Scientific research!" Solus corrected him. "Knowledgeable partner more likely to provide pleasurable experience! Also provide information on human mating customs—alcohol, mood music." He extended his hand, and Garrus shook it, still amused. "Good luck, Garrus. Enjoy yourself while possible."

Garrus left the lab, feeling awkward but also reassured, somehow. He was, however, unprepared for a message from the subject of his conversation with the salarian requesting him to the airlock. Apparently, his research into human sexuality would have to wait, because there was something other than repairs to take care of on Omega after all.

Garrus checked when he saw Samara waiting with Shepard up by the airlock. Then he thought about it. It made sense. Everyone else on Shepard's ground team had seen to family, completed some outstanding mission, taken care of some loose end. Everyone but the justicar. _Of course she has business too._

Samara's face was as serene and impassive as ever, but at second glance, the expression seemed deceptive. There was a tension to her posture, a contained energy to her that suggested that whatever business she did have, it was vital. "Garrus," she said smoothly.

"Samara."

"I understand you were a detective, prior to your association with Shepard in your search for Saren. I may have some need for your skill."

Garrus looked at Shepard, "The fugitive we were looking for on Illium?" he guessed.

Samara answered. "My daughter, and the reason I became a justicar. I do not know if you are familiar with the Ardat-Yakshi . . . ?"

The ancient asari name gave Garrus a moment's pause. "'Demon of the Night Winds'?" he translated. Something niggled at his memory, a case an asari senior detective had handled shortly after he had started at C-Sec. Some detectives were closemouthed about their cases, but he remembered the asari coworker being particularly vicious about confidentiality in this instance. The only reason the name had caught his memory. "I'm not familiar, but I think I heard something once. In regards to a murder case, if I remember right. Detective was precious about the details."

"My people do not like word of the condition to leave asari space," Samara told him. "An Ardat-Yakshi is a genetic defective. It is a very rare condition, that means that when an asari mates, her nervous system burns out that of her partner, leaving them in a vegetative state first, and eventually dead. The condition manifests with maturity. Sufferers are given the opportunity to retire to a life of peace and seclusion, but the condition is narcotic. Ardat-Yakshi can become addicted to the power and thrill of killing their mates, as has our target. My daughter, Morinth."

"Target," Garrus repeated. "So—"

"I must kill her," Samara confirmed. "The Code demands it, as does my own honor. She has come here. We must find her."

Garrus looked at Shepard. Her face was unreadable, but he could guess what was behind it. She wouldn't like this—Samara killing her daughter. But they could hardly let a serial killer wander around either. Especially not an asari. With their psycho-emotional abilities, criminal asari could be especially dangerous to imprison. And if Morinth was here—well. There was no law on Omega to give the woman over to, even if Samara was prepared to do so, and somehow, Garrus wasn't seeing a lot of room for negotiation in the asari's calm _I must kill her._ Shepard wouldn't like this, but hunting down criminals had been his life for two years.

"I'll help."

EDI chimed in, over the radio so the entire crew didn't hear. "The daily death count on Omega is too high for me to pinpoint an Ardat-Yakshi's location," she said. "However, given the reputation of Ardat-Yakshi among the asari, Aria T'Loak may have tracked her movements."

"Aria T'Loak. Fantastic." He looked wryly over at Shepard. "I imagine you're on speaking terms?"

"Not my idea," Shepard answered. Garrus guessed it wasn't. As soon as Aria's people had tagged the _Normandy_ landing on the station, she would have wanted eyes on Shepard. Make sure Shepard knew Omega's one rule and didn't have plans to overturn the whole sick, miserable order of life here. "Still. She's been useful enough. Helped me get to you and sent word ahead to let me into the quarantine to get Mordin. After I did her a minor favor, she also got us some resources for our mission. She's an apathetic mob boss that can't be bothered to keep any kind of real order as long as she stays in charge, but I haven't seen the point in making her an enemy."

Garrus hummed. Shepard shot him a look as they started through the airlock. "Are you going to be okay on this? You're the best tracker and investigator we've got, but if you can't deal with her or you think it'll be too dangerous for you, we'll leave you here."

Garrus looked back at her. "I can also navigate Omega better than anyone else you've got, Shepard. Mordin stayed in Gozu. Massani knows his way around, but not like I do. It'll be just like old times."

"It better not," Shepard muttered.

It wasn't. It went against every instinct Garrus had developed through two years in Omega's underworld to walk right up the thoroughfare and through Afterlife's front doors, but that's where Shepard led them. The bouncers glanced at the N7 on her armor and didn't say a word as the three of them passed.

The music in Afterlife was a physical thing. It pulsed up through Garrus's feet and into his bones. People out for a night on the town had to yell to hear one another over the din. A turian manned an illuminated bar to the right. Patrons swayed on their barstools and on the dance floor. Others, more sober, kept to corners, watchful and alert.

A half dozen asari and human women danced around poles set on neon platforms spaced through the room. Their glow-in-the-dark jumpsuits, every bit as tight as anything Lawson wore, had cutouts her jumpsuits didn't feature.

In the past, Garrus had ignored the exotic dancers that places like Afterlife tended to hire. Sure, the odd asari had caught his eye, if she was trying to, but it was always a momentary thing. Now, though, Garrus found himself considering the expanse of chest the Afterlife dancer uniforms left exposed—the cleavage in between the mammary deposits humans and asari seemed to find so appealing and even quarian female environment suits seemed to emphasize.

 _I don't understand it_ , he decided, with a feeling of vague unease. Clearly, mammals found the female glands they were named for attractive. When the time came, would Shepard expect him to compliment hers? They weren't particularly impressive, especially next to a specimen like Samara. In fact, that made him feel more comfortable, but did Shepard mind?

 _Eyes front, soldier. Talk to Aria now, contemplate human anatomy and sexual-cultural significance later. Preferably when Shepard and Samara can't look to the side and_ see _you comparing the fatty deposits on their chests to the local pole dancers._

The guard on the steps up to Aria's personal couch didn't stop them any more than the bouncer at the door had. Garrus glanced at Shepard, but she didn't announce herself or ask for an appointment or make any concession to formality at all.

Aria didn't greet her formally either. She simply nodded in greeting and gestured to the seat next to her on the couch. Shepard took it. Aria didn't offer Samara or Garrus a seat, and they stood at the bottom of her dais, waiting. The Pirate Queen of Omega didn't even acknowledge them. "What do you need?"

Her voice was perfectly audible. Of course, the acoustics in here were set up so that Aria's area was protected from the noise. Somewhat, anyway.

Shepard didn't beat around the bush. "An asari fugitive is hiding out here. She's an Ardat-Yakshi. We need to find her."

Aria's formerly expressionless face darkened. "I knew it," she muttered. "Nothing leaves a body quite so . . . empty . . . as an Ardat-Yakshi does."

"You haven't taken steps to kill her?" Samara wanted to know.

Aria's hard blue eyes raked over Samara. "Why would I?" she returned coolly. "She hasn't tried to seduce me." She turned back to Shepard. "Her last victim was a young girl. Pretty thing. Lived in the tenements near here. That's where I'd start looking."

Garrus regarded the rotten cancer at Omega's heart, both fascinated and disgusted. Two years he'd lived on her station, and he'd never once seen her in person. _How can someone so powerful, so connected be so unaffected by what happens on the station she professes to rule?_ Aria T'Loak was lean and deadly, dressed in black and fairly crackling with power, but she reminded him of nothing so much as a bloated spider, crouched on the center of an enormous web, aware of everything that touched it, but uninterested in anything that didn't feed or threaten her. Her gaze snapped to his suddenly, hovered over his scars a moment, and then found the emblem on his armor. Her tattooed lips turned up in amusement.

Shepard noticed. She stood, stepping back to stand between Garrus and Aria. "Thanks for the help," she said.

Aria tipped her head at Shepard. "I'll give you another free tip, Shepard: watch yourself with that one." She indicated Garrus with another glance. "Word's got back here he's not as dead as he's supposed to be. And if he's going to wear that emblem on his armor—well. I won't vouch for his safety if you leave him alone."

It didn't matter that the crowds on Omega wouldn't know him from the dozens of other fans and Archangel pretenders, Garrus knew. What mattered was that Aria T'Loak knew, and that meant anyone she wanted could know too. "I didn't know you cared." Garrus didn't bother disguising his contempt for her.

Aria T'Loak only raised her eyebrows. "I don't. Omega's already forgetting you, Archangel. But the gangs haven't. Just stay with Shepard if you know what's good for you." She turned her attention back to Shepard. "Good luck finding the Ardat-Yakshi, Shepard. Better luck catching her."

Shepard led Garrus and Samara down the steps to the main club again. She didn't speak until they were out, away from Afterlife. Then she matched her step to Garrus's. "So, she'll murder you if she has half a chance, right?"

Garrus considered. Unless he was mistaken, Aria didn't like him any more than he liked her.

 _More gratifying than I'd like to admit._ There was something clean in the open animosity he had felt back there, in knowing that Archangel had been annoyance enough that Aria T'Loak was taking the trouble to threaten him now. In essence, that back there had been, " _You_ _need to stay retired. Don't even think about coming back."_

But he also sensed Aria was willing to close the book on Archangel if he was. He didn't know what Aria thought her relationship with Shepard was, but it was obvious to him that she valued it more than any grudge she might still have against him.

"I don't think so," he told Shepard. "It'd be beneath her. She can't resist letting me know she could, though, and I don't think she'd cry if someone else did. We never came close to taking her down. But some of our operations may have hit her in the pocketbook."

"Good," Shepard said. Garrus glanced at her. Aria might think Shepard's voice was a little emphatic for a someone she offered no-strings-attached help to on a moment's notice, but after a second, Garrus wasn't surprised. Shepard's morals hadn't changed, even if she wasn't willing to completely overturn the status quo on Omega on a whim. Aria was useful to Shepard, but that didn't mean Shepard liked her.

Aria's directions had been a little vague, but "tenements near here" was enough to get them started. Once they were in the low-rent complex, a couple of judicious credits to the neighbors got them the name 'Diana,' the mother of the girl who had been killed, and the apartment number where they could find her.

When they stood in front of the door, Garrus rapped on it without hesitation. Talking to the families of homicide victims was never fun, but he'd done it often enough. The woman inside took her time to answer the door, but a light underneath told Garrus she was in.

A bolt drew back. A chain rattled, and the door opened to reveal a pale and careworn human woman. Her hair was greasy, like she hadn't washed it for a few days. She looked exhausted. She blinked at them all: a turian, a human, and an asari in her doorway, all in battle armor with some serious guns—but not mercs from any identifiable organization she might expect to be looking for protection money. She made the right conclusion.

"Are you here about my daughter?" she asked, voice small. "My Nef died a week ago, and no one seems to care. The medics said it was a brain hemorrhage, but that's not true: it was murder! Someone killed my Nef, my baby!" Her voice got stronger through this speech, and more desperate.

Garrus heard in that voice that the woman, Diana, had been saying this all week to everyone she knew, and no one had believed her. She lived in a low-rent tenement. Probably couldn't afford a doctor, and most people didn't try to make a free clinic for anything other than an emergency. The medics probably thought Nef had had some sort of untreated condition and had dismissed the case. They were busy, on Omega.

"I think she was murdered too," Shepard told Diana, in a calm, even tone. "And I'm looking for her killer."

Diana opened the door wide and let them in, clinging to Shepard's hand, tears in her eyes. "Oh, thank you! It's so hard when no one believes you! I'm all alone now!" She closed the door and looked at all of them, uncertain. "Are you . . . are you Aria's people?"

Shepard smirked and glanced at Garrus. Diana followed her gaze. Then her eyes found the symbol on Garrus's armor. "No . . ." Diana said slowly, answering her own question. "You aren't, are you?" And she looked very hard at Garrus, then Shepard. Her lips trembled, and Garrus smelled fear on her. She didn't know who they were, he didn't think, but she had some guesses that they were dangerous.

"We're here to help," Shepard said quietly. "Does it really matter who we are or who sent us?"

Diana squared her shoulders then, deciding maybe she could _use_ some dangerous people. "No one else on this hellhole station gives a damn that my Nef is dead!" she said. "If you can do something about it, I'll help you however I can."

"What kind of a girl was your daughter?" Shepard asked her.

Diana smiled sadly. "My Nef had a fire inside her. She was shy, but she was creative and driven and . . . the best girl a mother could hope for."

Samara stepped in. "She was creative? How so?"

"She was a sculptor," Diana explained. "Several galleries were interested in her. Said her work was 'fresh.'"

That was saying something on Omega, Garrus knew. This girl had been poor. No fame, no connections. No way to buy into the art scene on the station, which was as corrupt as everything else. Nef had to have been good.

"Did your daughter have a lot of friends?" Shepard asked.

Diana shrugged. "Not a lot, no. She was shy. Spent most of her time off making her sculptures, not hanging out with friends." Her face hardened then. "Something did change in the last few weeks, though. She started talking about an asari. Morinth."

"I see," Samara sighed.

"I didn't like her!" Diana said bitterly. "She kept dragging Nef out to clubs, and I'm pretty sure she gave my daughter drugs."

Shepard looked at the justicar. "Samara, does Morinth control her victims with drugs?"

Samara shook her head. "She controls them through sheer will. The drugs are just a lifestyle. She loves the club, loves the bass. She's a hedonist."

Diana's eyes were wide. She'd suspected, Garrus saw—aware with a mother's knowledge of her child that Nef had none of the health problems the medics who had examined her after death said that she had had—but she hadn't really _known_ Nef was murdered until now. "So this Morinth did hurt my daughter? Is she the one that . . . that—"

Samara reached out for Diana and gripped her wrist. "I will bring justice to the one that did this," she promised.

Shepard looked annoyed; she didn't like to promise anything she wasn't certain she could deliver. It was bad practice—in the military or on the force. They had a lead here. It might be a good one or a bad one—no telling yet. Either way, Morinth could still get away, easy. "We'll do all we can, ma'am," Shepard said, more cautiously.

Diana looked at Garrus, though, at the scarring on his face and the guns he carried. At the emblem on his armor: Archangel, the avenger of the powerless here on Omega. "If you find the person that hurt my Nef, you kill her!" she ordered them passionately. "Or tell me where she is, and I'll kill her!"

Garrus frowned. "Can you tell us anything about Morinth?" he asked.

Diana sighed. "I never met her, but Nef talked about her like she was a queen. You'd swear there was no one else alive when she talked about Morinth."

She spat the asari's name like a curse. Samara looked over at Shepard. "That sounds familiar."

 _So only profile—she parties. Clubs, music, drugs. Could give us an idea of where she finds her victims, anyway._ "Where did Nef like to go?" Garrus asked. "Did she have a particular spot in the city she enjoyed?"

"She was always quiet, working here at home," Diana answered. "Then, a few weeks ago, she started going out all the time, to the VIP area of that club down the street. I think you need a password or something to get in there. The change was so sudden. She just seemed . . . tired and distracted when she wasn't around Morinth."

 _That's a yes on the hunting grounds, then. We have a lead. But how to get into Afterlife's VIP area?_ It was possible that Aria could get them in, but while Garrus thought Samara wouldn't mind going back to her for help tracking down Morinth, he didn't think it was a good idea to put themselves in debt to Aria T'Loak for anything else. _And if Morinth's smart, she'll be listening for anyone asking about her. She could have an ear to the ground. She could hear we've pulled some strings._ Garrus looked at Shepard, then back at Diana. "Do you mind if we take a look at Nef's room?" he asked. Something in there might help them get to Morinth—at Afterlife or even where the asari lived.

Diana's face crumpled. "I didn't want to disturb anything. Her clothes, her art, her sculptures—everything is the way she left it . . . the way it will always be. My baby is gone—"

She was crying now, her mascara running, sobbing with grief for her daughter. Shepard fished in her belt and brought out a handkerchief to give to her. Diana took it and collected herself.

"Thank you. I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just miss her so much."

"It's okay," Shepard told her, though she looked awkward and uncomfortable. "We've all suffered loss."

Samara seemed more comfortable. She wrapped her arm around Diana to comfort her, bracing her. "I know what it means to lose a daughter. I will avenge her," she promised.

To Samara, Garrus guessed, Morinth was already dead. She had died however many years or centuries ago—when she had first decided to become a killer. It was a strange way to look at it, but as valid as any. _Maybe._

"Thank you," Diana said. She nodded at Garrus then, and typed something on her omni-tool. "Please, if it helps you find her killer, look through her things."

The access panel to a bedroom off the main room beeped open. "We will be respectful," Samara told Diana.

Shepard nodded at Garrus, gesturing for him to take the lead. "Let's go."

Nef's room was small and cluttered. Posters of independent bands, both here in the Terminus and from asari space, lined the walls. There were shelves of small, abstract sculptures, in metal or cement or of mixed materials that jutted out here and there. There was just enough room for Garrus to stand with Shepard and Samara. The rest of the space was taken up by a workbench that had clearly doubled as a desk and a small, single bed.

Samara reached out to touch the unfinished sculpture on the workbench—curves and angles of beaten metal that suggested something that lay in between a starship and a geometrical fact. Diana stood in the doorway to Nef's bedroom, watching them. "Nef made that," she said softly. "Some gallery offered me four years' salary for it, but I'd never part with it."

Shepard was more interested in an electronic receipt in the wastebasket by the workbench—a customizable tag that you could add to a gift when you used certain messenger services, here and on other hub worlds. Shepard swiped her fingers over the receipt, and the message that had been recorded there played again. "Nef, I'm sending you this hologram by the elcor artist, Forta," said a female voice, playful, mid-range. Young-sounding. In the doorway, Diana had stiffened. She gripped the doorframe. _Morinth sent this hologram._ "His work is sublime," Morinth's voice continued. "But don't stare at it too long, or you may go mad!" The voice softened, became intimate. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you, love. I can't wait to hear what you think of Forta!"

Shepard let the receipt fall again, and Garrus moved past her and Samara to the bed. There was a holo-journal sitting on it, the cheap type that was really only used to record short-term entries for short-term reference. The journal would provide a holo-rendering of the user for the playback, but couldn't hold more than a few entries. Businessmen and scientists mostly used them to keep notes for current experiments or upcoming conferences. _I guess artists might find them useful for project methods too._

Garrus picked up the journal. He tapped the interface, and a light blinked green, waiting for an oral instruction. There were three entries in the data bank. "Read the oldest entry," Garrus said.

A girl's face appeared over the interface—human, young. Maybe twenty years old. Pale, with dark, curious eyes and dark hair gelled into an irregular, artistic arrangement. "Hey diary," a voice said. Shy, like Diana had said, but sweet. Musical, if somewhat flat like most alien voices. Diana sobbed and left the doorway, retreating back into the main room. "Cycle 34, orbit 671. There's a lot to talk about. I dropped Jaruut's name, and they let me in the VIP room at Afterlife. I'm sure everyone was staring at me." On the holo, Nef's eyes were bright, excited. "Then the most beautiful asari starts dancing near me." Her brow furrowed as she tried to describe the encounter. "She moves like water, form and volume, but shifting, changing. I'm in a trance. Then I'm dancing with her! Later, we went for skewers. I'm supposed to see her again tomorrow."

 _Not project methods at all then_. They had what they needed to find Morinth, if they got lucky _. If we can find a little more, though . . ._

"Read the middle entry," Garrus told the journal.

Nef's image appeared on the display again. This time, she looked worried, frowning. "Cycle 36, orbit 671. Am I a freak?" she asked herself. "Morinth is a girl like me, and she's definitely not human. Just . . . when we dance and the Hallex is flowing through me—the way she looks at me, with a hunger, a longing. _No one's_ ever looked at me like that." Her eyes went distant on the display, and her lips turned up. "We kissed tonight," she murmured. The entry cut off.

Garrus felt Shepard's presence right beside him like a force. If he was reading things right, _both_ of them were proof that people didn't always know what they liked, or could like. But something about this sounded different. Like Nef hadn't ever thought about being attracted to another species, or to women at all. Like her instant attraction to Morinth had not only surprised her or made her search herself a little but had genuinely disturbed her. And he didn't like the way she described Morinth's _hunger_. Longing, sure. Lust. But Nef's description gave Morinth predatory qualities. _Well—according to Samara, she is a predator. Addicted to a high she gets off killing the people she mates with._

Asari had psychic abilities other species didn't. Living on a hub world, it was impossible not to notice that every other species saw them differently, thought of them differently. The way they reproduced meant that they had an innate power to appeal to anyone they decided they wanted. It was usually just a momentary appeal, though, and easy enough to resist if you knew what was happening and weren't actually disposed to be interested. Morinth's abilities seemed heightened, though, and dangerous.

"Read the newest entry," he said.

The final entry played. Nef looked fevered, manic. Her pupils were dilated. She was high—literally—but also high on Morinth. She spoke quickly. "Cycle 32, orbit 67. She's going to take me to her apartment tonight!" Nef squealed. "Whatever happens, I want to be with her forever. She can sell my pieces; we can live somewhere glamorous—like the women in _Vaenia_ , that vid Morinth likes. How did this happen to me? I'm just dumb trash from Omega."

Garrus shut off the holo-journal. "Well," he said, disturbed.

Samara looked grave. "This is Morinth's work," she said, an edge of disgust in her tone. "She's attracted to artists, creators. Someone with a spark, slightly isolated from their peers. She impresses with sophistication and sex appeal. Then she strikes! The hunt interests her as much as the conquest."

"Anyone who's successfully hunted sapient beings for four hundred years warrants caution," Shepard observed. Something in her phrasing, and the way a side of her mouth was turned down, told Garrus that she had also noticed that Nef might not have been attracted to Morinth on her own.

Samara confirmed their suspicions. "Morinth speaks to you on many levels. Her body tells yours that she will bring unimaginable ecstasy. Her scent evokes emotions long hidden. Her eyes promise you things you were always scared to ask of another. Her voice whispers to you after she is done speaking."

Shepard let out a breath. "She sounds more like a highly evolved killer than a genetic defective."

Samara looked thoughtful. "The condition has been present since my people huddled around fires at night. Perhaps it is symbiotic rather than a defect.

"Storming her den would be a mistake: she will have a hundred escape routes planned," Samara continued. "She will go to ground and disappear for fifty years or more. This is the closest I've ever been."

Shepard folded her arms. "You sound like you're working your way toward an idea."

Samara nodded. "Afterlife's VIP section seems her preferred hunting ground. You must go there alone and unarmed."

Garrus blinked. He interjected. "Wait. Your plan is to send Shepard in by herself?"

Samara looked back at Garrus. "Morinth's targets are isolated," she explained again, as if he should have already thought of that. "She will not dare to move upon someone obviously defended."

"A sting operation isn't a bad idea," Garrus told her, "but I know how to run back-up for one. We can go in separately. I know Omega, Samara. We can both set up so Morinth doesn't see us. Shepard doesn't need to go in there alone."

"If we are in the club, she will sense us," Samara disagreed. "If she catches sight of me, even by accident, she will certainly flee, and one look at you would give the game away. No. Morinth is far too cagey. She'd simply disappear."

"And you think I can bait her?" Shepard asked, skeptical.

Garrus stared at her. _You'd think she hadn't noticed all the people we meet who try to hit on her._ He still had no idea whether Shepard was conventionally attractive by human standards, but she had a presence that _everyone_ noticed. Besides, from everything they'd heard, she was just Morinth's type. "'Someone with a spark, slightly isolated from their peers'?" he quoted. "That's you, Shepard."

Shepard shifted. "Could just as easily be you," she muttered.

Garrus gestured at his face with one hand, but Samara shook her head. "No. She's right. The scarring makes you appear dangerous. Morinth would like that. Either one of you could attract her. You are artists on the battlefield, and your sparks burn brightly indeed. I ask you to do this, Shepard, because you are distant enough to intrigue her without frightening her away. This is Omega, and it has not been long enough for you to do this task, Garrus. Archangel is too well known on Omega as a champion of the weak. Archangel might have taken notice of Morinth's murders. She would never approach you."

Garrus looked at Shepard. Shepard looked back at him. "She's right," he conceded. "The grafitti's everywhere, but Aria recognized me, and Diana might have. And there were all those people on Illium. Morinth might have heard of me by now, and she just might recognize me. It's got to be you."

Shepard still didn't like it. "I don't like going in without a gun."

Garrus glanced at Samara. "I don't get that part either." He looked back at Shepard. "You know how to conceal a weapon?"

"Part of my spec ops training," Shepard confirmed. "Sometimes N-operatives have to go in undercover. Hid a pistol under a cocktail dress just a few months ago on Bekenstein."

Samara stepped forward. "Trust me," she pled. "Morinth will feel it if you enter her hunting grounds armed. I will be in the shadows watching, Shepard. You will never be alone. This I swear. But this must be a subtle, delicate act." Her eyes moved from Garrus to Shepard, imploring.

Shepard pressed her lips together. "This is your mission, Samara. We'll run things your way," she agreed at last. She sighed. "I guess if I'm going to be bait, we better head back to the _Normandy_ so I can try and look pretty and harmless."

" _Relatively_ harmless," Samara corrected. "You must also look dangerous. Where you are concerned, that will be part of the appeal for Morinth. You simply cannot appear to be an active threat. We can talk more about it once we're there."

"Understood," Shepard said.

They left Nef's bedroom. Diana was sitting in the far corner, her legs curled up beneath her on the sofa. "You're going," she said. Her face was clear of makeup now—she had cried it all off. It made her look older and softer. "Do you have something?"

"We have a lead, and we have a plan," Shepard told her. "Thanks for your help, Diana."

Diana took her hand and squeezed tightly. "Just find Morinth. Kill her. For me, and for my daughter."

* * *

Back on the _Normandy_ , Garrus stopped Shepard before she could head off to her cabin. "Shepard. Are you sure about this? I didn't like what we heard about Morinth from those holo-journals."

Shepard glanced at Samara. "She's Samara's daughter," she answered. "And Samara's been chasing her for centuries. If she says this will work, I'd say we probably have a shot. I should go. Every minute Morinth is out there, she could be finding another victim." She left, heading for the elevator.

Garrus turned to Samara. "You know, when you use bait to go fishing, there's a good chance the bait gets swallowed _before_ you get your fish," he told her.

"I will not let my daughter swallow Shepard," Samara promised. "I swear to you, Garrus. I know this is difficult for you. You are always with her, protecting her from danger. Trust that I can also protect her."

She walked away as well. _Probably going to meditate_. Garrus looked down at the ground.

He couldn't shake it. He had a bad feeling about this. "Joker?" he called down the hall toward the cockpit.

"Yeah?" Joker called back. He sat there through most of the day even when the ship wasn't flying. Garrus didn't get it, but it made things simple.

"If anyone asks, I went out to get some old mods from a contact." Solana had texted him some ideas for upgrades for the squad's Locusts. He would have to make sure he came back with them so he wasn't lying to Joker.

"No problem," Joker called back. "You wanna take someone with you? Pretty sure Shepard'd be pissed if some merc tried to assassinate you like last time, and it's more likely here than it was back on Illium."

Garrus remembered Aria's warning, then dismissed it. He'd stay out of sight, that was all. "Shepard worries too much. I'll be fine."

"Whatever you say, Vakarian. Be back in time for dinner." Joker's voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Garrus left the ship and started through the docks toward Afterlife. His radio crackled on, and Joker's voice came over the comm. "Hey, Garrus. Make sure the commander comes back in one piece too."

Garrus didn't know if EDI had briefed the pilot on what was happening or if he had just been able to hear them down the corridor from the cockpit when they left the _Normandy_ and came back. But he radioed back. "That's the plan."

* * *

 **A/N: So, second majorly messed up loyalty mission. I actually did not plan to write them back-to-back like this. That's just the way I play through them. I guess creepy rapists is the theme for this little bit of the game and novelization.**

 **Samara's plan really doesn't make a lot of sense. I wanted to highlight that here.**

 **First off, no way Shepard, the single most important member of the team, is the only person on it who could serve as bait for Morinth. I think Tali, Jack, and Mordin also might attract Morinth, in different ways. And Garrus, as I've said here, though on Omega, as Samara also observes, Morinth probably wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole.**

 **But secondly, with members of the team trained in stealth ops and shadowing people, there is absolutely no reason Shepard shouldn't have backup or a tail. Kasumi would be the best choice, but Thane and Garrus are also solid candidates, way better than Samara in her** _ **red**_ **armor.**

 **But fine, let's assume Morinth, maybe high and definitely aurally impaired in a noisy, busy club, will still pick up anyone else watching Shepard (but not her mother, whom she's been running from for centuries).** _ **Why can't Shepard bring a concealed weapon?**_

 **1) There's no guarantee Morinth will decide to get with Shepard right away, and if she doesn't, that Shepard will ever see her again. She played with Nef for weeks. The best solution is to quickly shoot her as soon as she identifies herself.**

 **2) Shepard is cybernetically enhanced and has undergone gene therapy. But Morinth is an incredibly powerful biotic, and Shepard might not be biotic at all and also might be psychically, mentally, or emotionally impaired in an encounter with Morinth. If Morinth suspects anything at all, Shepard is very much at a disadvantage against her if she gets violent.**

 **3) Unarmed, Shepard has to rely entirely on Samara to keep sight of her, to protect her, and to kill Morinth. If Shepard has a gun, Samara just has that much more of a chance that this mission** _ **will actually take Morinth out**_ **.**

 **So screw Samara's plan. Garrus is providing insurance.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


	41. DNW: Murray and Harker

**In Bram Stoker's** _ **Dracula**_ **, after the murder and perversion of Lucy Westenra, Mina Murray and her fiancé and later husband Jonathan Harker join the campaign to avenge Lucy on the titular vampire. In the process, Mina Murray Harker herself falls prey to the vampire, but even entranced and falling under Dracula's spell, she fights back, both interpreting clues for the other vampire hunters and spying on him through their psychic link. She leads the others to Dracula's location, enabling the vampire's ultimate defeat.**

* * *

XLI

Demon of the Night Winds: Murray and Harker

There was a dark familiarity to slipping through the streets of Omega. Garrus found himself tagging the people he passed in the same old way—a family; probable escaped fugitive; vorcha; merc. No one to worry about. He logged whether the guns he saw were serious threats or just for show, and he logged who knew how to use them. Biotic implants, high-cost tech. Who was drunk, who was high, and who had friends along. He kept his pace casual—fast enough he obviously had business, so the vendors and con artists wouldn't try to stop him, but loose enough that it wouldn't look like that business was urgent. He wove through the crowds, keeping to places where the shadows were deep enough or the glare was bright enough that it would be difficult for anyone to make him out to clearly.

Advertisements played over the PA system. It was the same on a lot of hub worlds, but here, they weren't for skin care products, the new vid that had just come out, or the local news. Here, it was propaganda for the Blue Suns or the batarian slave trade. Advertisements that left an acrid taste in Garrus's mouth and made his plates itch. _I hate this place._ Garrus felt the ugly rhythm of Omega move through him again and made for Afterlife.

It was probably asking for trouble, heading right back to Afterlife, and alone, after Aria T'Loak had warned him off. _Well. Can't be worse than getting all dressed up to go be bait for a serial killer with psychic powers._ Garrus had avoided Aria's club back when he lived here, but he knew where the main doors and the VIP section were. Everyone did. If Omega had a heart, Afterlife was it. The club was th the start of the sick, pulsing beat that ran through every street and alley, and everyone on the station had to pass through eventually, like cells in the circulatory system.

As the entrance to the VIP level of the club came into view, Garrus guessed he was probably still several minutes ahead of Shepard and Samara. That was good. Not only would no one connect their entrance to his—crowds ebbed and flowed through Afterlife like the tides—but he would have a chance to get in position before either of them could see him.

Garrus knew Samara didn't want him here. Thought he would jeopardize the mission, that Morinth would somehow mark him and run. He could guess why Samara felt that way. _Probably why Shepard didn't argue with her_. But Shepard was nervous. He'd seen that. She was a commando, not a spy, and Samara's plan would leave her exposed and way outside of her comfort zone. Morinth was Samara's daughter, though, so, just this once, Shepard had given into the way the justicar wanted to run things when she really would have preferred some backup. _Or at least a gun_.

It could be that Samara was right to worry about him, Garrus thought. There was no denying he was personally invested in making sure the commander didn't get her brain blown up embracing eternity with Samara's daughter, and it wasn't beyond the range of possibility that that personal investment could affect something about his approach here that Morinth might pick up on and get spooked by. Personally, though, he thought Samara was taking a bigger risk tailing Shepard herself. Morinth had no idea Shepard or anyone with Shepard was hunting her, but she'd been wary of Samara for centuries.

 _Still, could we have tagged someone else for this?_ Garrus played with the idea for a minute. Everyone on the _Normandy_ from Gardner to Massani would want to protect Shepard from this—as their captain and the leader of their mission. They were all loyal to her, admired her, were ready and proud to follow her into hell tomorrow or the next day. There were enough of them that Samara might not consider too close to Shepard or likely to hover over her. _But not enough of them with experience tailing a mark. Goto. Maybe._

But it was an inescapable fact: Garrus didn't want anyone else on this. Not here. Not on Omega. And not when it was Shepard on the ground.

Garrus hoped he was just being paranoid, that Shepard and Samara were on top of this, they wouldn't need him, and he could go for mods in a bit without anyone but Joker ever knowing he'd been here. _But if Shepard's assuming Samara knows what she's doing, and I assume that she doesn't, at least we're covered from every angle._ They were too close to the assault on the Collectors to send Shepard alone and unarmed against a serial killer with the psychic ability to manipulate and control her victims.

 _Serial rapist, if she's manipulating consent_.

The name Nef had given the bouncer weeks ago still worked to get Garrus into the VIP area of Afterlife. The guy gave Garrus a stern warning not to start any trouble. He promised he wouldn't— _Morinth will start the trouble_ —and the bouncer opened the door for him.

The pulsing dance beat of Afterlife filled his ears again. The lights here spun in hypnotic patterns in different, more feverish colors than in the main area of the club. Everyone on the floor, at the bar, and at the tables that surrounded both had a sheen of money and success to them. But otherwise, the VIP area at Afterlife seemed a lot like the public area where Aria T'Loak held her court. _Aren't as many dancers either._

The layout of the room was difficult. The dance floor was arranged around a central pillar. Circular half walls separated it from tables and alcoves where people ate, drank, and rested. _Plenty of corners and shadows to hide in_.

But there was also a stairway up to a balcony area. Garrus took it, and smiled. There weren't as many people up here—all the action was down below. And he'd been right. From up here, he any view of the lower level would be visible in a few steps to the left or right. He could see the bar, the entryway, the dance floor. The door that led back to the main section. But it would be hard for anyone on the lower level to see him over the wall that encircled the balcony.

 _And no one ever looks up._

Garrus left his rifle clipped to his hardsuit for now. He wouldn't shoot in here if he didn't have to. Too many civilians. And if he went for a gun, a couple people would be sure to notice, and then other people would look to see what the first ones were looking at. He'd be made. If he looked like someone minding his own business?

So Garrus sat at a table in the center of the balcony, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms, bringing up his omni-tool, like he had work to do but wanted to enjoy the music and the dancers while he did it. The seeming task would make him look unavailable. Unapproachable. Beneath interest. And the table was in the shadow of the sculpture hanging in the center of the club.

He didn't have to wait long for Shepard and Samara. According to his visor, they came into the club half an hour after he did. From his position on the balcony, he saw them, standing behind a wall on the lower level in the deepest shadow in the room.

Garrus scanned to left and right. If Morinth was near his position, she would be able to see them too. But he didn't see a lone asari nearby. Just a group of turian businesspeople and a salarian-asari couple. He glanced at the salarian's partner more closely, but she looked young, and too wide-eyed and innocent, somehow, for the mark they were after. Shepard and Samara were clear.

He couldn't see either of them clearly yet, but his visor had tagged them, and Shepard was out of her armor, but Samara was wearing hers. Two seconds' work on his omni-tool remote-activated her radio, and their voices came through his suit.

"You must go in alone," Samara was saying. "Morinth will be watching. Like any predator, she is cautious. You must pique her interest enough that she will approach."

It occurred to Garrus that while they knew Morinth had met Nef here and come here with her often, they had no guarantee that she would be here any time today. _How long can we stake this club out before we have to go? Hope we get lucky._

"When you are face to face," Samara told Shepard, "subtly encourage her to invite you to her apartment. I'll follow discreetly, and when you are alone, I'll spring the trap. Know this: until I get there, you are in great peril. She will be planning to inflict horrors on you. If you are not careful, you will want her to."

 _So that's a yes on psychic control of her victims. Great._

Shepard's voice came through, a little faint, but still audible. "How can I spark her interest when I'm not even talking to her?"

Samara sounded thoughtful when she spoke next. "Courage or suicidal bravery could attract her. Hurt someone in defense and she will be excited, but pick a fight and she'll be bored. Show skill at working smoothly through a nightclub crowd; she will be intrigued. She'll want you the moment she sees you. The rest is just a matter of overpowering her caution."

 _Always nice to hear you're attractive_ , Garrus mused. _Somewhat less nice to hear a serial killer will find you irresistible_.

Shepard sounded nervous too. "How do I convince her to take me home?"

"She admires strength and directness and vigor," Samara answered. "Modesty, chivalry, or meekness frustrate and bore her. Violence excites her. You've killed, Shepard. She'll like that."

 _Shepard won't like that she likes that._ Garrus could almost hear her fidgeting when she replied. "I don't know about this, Samara. We're going to need careful timing here."

"I will be near, and I will come for you, Shepard," Samara promised. "Trust me, as I trust and honor you."

 _And if she screws it up, I'm right here, Shepard. I've got you. Just like always._

Shepard let out a deep breath. "Let's get started."

Shepard's silhouette moved in the entryway, but Samara reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Shepard, we only get one chance at this," she whispered. "Any mistake and Morinth will disappear. If you're the least bit unsure, come talk to me. I will wait here, and Shepard? Thank you. I do not share this burden easily, and you are the only soul I can imagine sharing it with."

Garrus saw Shepard's head nod. Then she walked out into the room proper, and Garrus hissed in a breath. _It was totally bizarre,_ Joker had told him once of Shepard in a dress. _Like watching one of those crappy vids they sometimes make of her, except it was really her, not some asari romance star_

Turian fashions, for men and women, didn't show a lot of skin. For one, though turian hide had some natural protection, it just wasn't a good idea to go around without some synthetic protection too on Palaven. Naturally, culturally, most turians were in the habit of covering up, whether they had actually been born on Palaven or not. In turian fashion, men and women showed their taste in the fabrics they wore, the colors and patterns they chose.

After almost a decade on the Citadel and a couple years on Omega, Garrus was past expecting aliens to conform to the turian fashions he'd grown up with. Asari preferred long, tight, slinky dresses, with interesting cutouts.

But he'd been unprepared to see Shepard in a dress like the one she was wearing now.

Like Shepard's other civvies, this wasn't asari-style. The dress was Earthen to the core. Not only were both arms left completely bare, but the length didn't even cover Shepard's backward knees. Her calves stretched out beneath the dress, tan and muscled and seeming to go on for kilometers. Instead of boots, she wore black slingback heels. The collar was high enough, mostly covered in a sort of vest piece, but the front dipped low to a sort of curved neckline designed to show off that cleavage area humans and asari thought was so important. Garrus still didn't get why people were supposed to be impressed by that, but the expanse of _collarbone_ the neckline left open, accentuated by a short, silver necklace, made him swallow hard.

He saw half a dozen, eight people turn to look at her. The strobe lights flashing on her yellow hair, still pulled back in a style that smacked of the military, but more loosely now, so a few curls fell around her face and ears. The lean, deadly strength of her. Through his visor, he could see she'd put on makeup for the night club too. Longer lashes than usual and a red-brown lip that . . .

 _The people_ watching _Shepard, Garrus. The people_ watching _her._

Samara would be making the same scan. Garrus stood slowly from the table he sat at and backed farther into the shadows on the balcony, behind an elevated pole dancer.

Below, Shepard had walked onto the dance floor. She was talking to a turian and an off-duty dancer. The dancer looked angry, afraid. The turian was coming onto her. He was being aggressive about it too. He looked drunk, but not drunk enough that he wasn't a valid threat to the smaller asari dancer. She pushed out at him, yelling something. She was standing under a speaker, though, and Garrus couldn't hear her over the pulsing dance music.

Shepard grabbed the turian's shoulder, turning him to face her instead. She folded her arms over her chest and said something, challenging him. The turian raised his hands, moving away from the asari and toward Shepard instead. He looked her up and down, leered, then hooked his arm around Shepard's waist and moved his head toward her cheek to lick it.

 _Ooh._ Bad _idea_.

Shepard sidestepped out of the guy's grip and stepped down _hard_ on his spur. In the same movement, she reached up and grabbed his head fringe and pulled it forward, using the leverage to throw the guy over her hip and into the center column of the dance floor.

Garrus _could_ hear the bastard's yelp of pain over the music. He grinned.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dancer thanking Shepard, but one of the people watching her had caught his attention—near the bar in the shadows.

 _So she is here._ Morinth looked a lot like her mother. They had the same blue eyes, broad cheekbones, and clear complexion. But the features that were remote and serene on Samara looked dangerous on her daughter. She had a darker, more poisonous-looking color on her lips, and her eyes were darkly lined and shadowed. And her eyes were fixed on Shepard. Hungrily.

Once he had made Morinth, Garrus forced himself to keep scanning the crowd. Samara was worried Morinth would sense someone watching her. He wouldn't give her that chance. He positioned himself instead so that he looked like he was watching one of the dancers on duty.

"Thirsty?"

The voice was turian; flanged with flirtatious subharmonics. Garrus glanced over and saw a turian woman had come to lean against the balcony wall. Her colony markings said she was from Altakiril originally; the plates said midthirties; and the close-clinging layered ivory and violet silk and the heavy scent she wore gave him an idea of what she did. "I promise, I know what to do with a big boy like you far better than she does. Want a drink?"

Garrus smiled at her and looked away, over the rest of the club again. Down below, he saw Shepard walking away from a human male who looked somewhat dazed, or maybe high, shaking her head in seeming bemusement. "Appreciate the offer, but I'm cutting back," he told the turian woman beside him.

The woman shrugged. "Suit yourself, spacer." She walked off in search of a more promising client.

Below, Shepard had moved to the dance floor. Garrus saw her give another asari—a patron, not a dancer—that trademark Shepard smirk and a wink and say something. Garrus was amused. _She's a little better at this than I thought she'd be_. He wasn't surprised when the asari grinned—in a _very_ pleased and flattered way—twined her arms around Shepard's neck, and started undulating her hips Shepard's direction. Shepard was surprised. She hadn't expected her mostly social advance to be so welcome. She stumbled a bit. Garrus chuckled, bringing up his omni-tool again for cover. _You wouldn't think someone so in command of her body in combat would trip over herself dancing_. But there it was. _Maybe it's the heels. Or the asari hanging all over her._

Of course, the sudden uncertainty after the confident approach turned _drop-dead sexy_ into _adorable_ , and Shepard's dance partner didn't seem at all deterred by her awkwardness. Instead, beaming, she took the lead, taking Shepard through a kind of dance that made it plain she was a little more accustomed to meeting people at clubs than the former Alliance commando that had approached her. Mostly, Shepard managed to follow the asari step for step, but the two of them weren't going to be winning any dance contests. The asari didn't seem to mind; she looked at the planes of Shepard's face and the curls around them with open admiration, and her hands lingered over Shepard's arms and hips.

It would have been funny—Shepard in over her head with the woman she had approached for cover, completely out of touch with exactly how attractive she was—except that the cover was working. Garrus didn't know how observant Morinth was, if she was seeing _skill working through a nightclub crowd_ or evidence of a woman _slightly isolated from her peers_ , but Shepard's real target had circled around the room toward her. Morinth bobbed to the beat, still watching Shepard. She was almost directly opposite Garrus now, and his visor magnified her face as she licked her lips, once, moistening them.

The song ended and transitioned to another. Garrus saw Shepard extricate herself from her dance partner and say something polite. The asari looked disappointed, but she wasn't crushed. She squeezed Shepard's bare shoulder and started dancing by herself to the next song. Shepard walked away from her, quickly, toward the tables by the bar.

 _Slow down, Shepard. So you weren't into her. That's fine. But try and look like you're willing to meet_ someone _pretty. Morinth has to feel like she has a chance._

It was strange, Garrus thought, as Shepard ordered a drink at the bar and stood back to wait. It was too easy to see the people they met everywhere who wanted Shepard—men, women, humans, asari, drell. It hadn't really occurred to him before how little she actually did to invite the attention. _She's Shepard. That's enough. And she teases just about everybody. But she never means it, does she? When they come too close, she freezes right up, every time. Or pretends to completely misunderstand._

Garrus tried to remember if he had ever seen Shepard return anyone's attention, really. If he'd ever heard of her going on anything like a date, or setting up some casual fun on shore leave, maybe. He couldn't remember even hearing rumors from her time as Anderson's XO and before.

 _I'm the last one to judge if it's been a while, but . . ._

 _Why now?_

 _Why me?_

 _. . ._

 _First sexual encounter since she came back, I'd bet, maybe in a few years, and possibly the last one before we all die past Omega-4, and she's going with a turian she might not even be physically compatible with? Last time before_ I _die, maybe, and_ I'm _going with a human? And it's been months . . ._

Sudden insecurity gnawed at his gut, and he had to shake his head to remember what he was supposed to be doing. He found Morinth again, just a few meters away from Shepard, but behind a loud group of celebrating salarians. Shepard hadn't noticed her—or hadn't let on that she had. Instead, drink in hand now, she was focused on two turians at a table by the bar, shoulders squared and mouth grim in a way Garrus recognized.

He saw the problem at once. The turians were up to something. How many times had he sat in a bar with Sensat, Erash, and Melenis just that way, scouting out potential targets? And these guys looked more like thugs than like heroic vigilantes. They were talking quietly together, planning an attack, and Shepard was planning to stop it. Unarmed and in a cocktail dress.

 _Shepard, don't!_

Morinth hadn't approached Shepard yet, and Garrus didn't have a clear line of sight to her position. If Garrus drew his gun to back up Shepard now, he'd also draw attention of other people in the club. Morinth would make him, and if she didn't get immediately that he was here watching Shepard, paranoia would still drive her underground.

 _Shepard—_

Shepard didn't care. She'd spoken to one of the turians, challenging him, confronting him on whatever he and his friend were up to. Immediately both turians were on the defensive, rising from the table, both angry and annoyed. One of them lunged at her.

Garrus's nerves sang as he watched, but it turned out that he hadn't had to worry. Shepard punched her attacker hard, underhand beneath the rib cage, applying by instinct what she had learned in her fight with Garrus back in the shuttle bay on the _Normandy_. Garrus laughed softly as the turian gasped and doubled over, and Shepard went after this guy's spur too, just like the guy that had been harassing the dancer, using the heel of her formal shoe for additional leverage. The turian went down.

Then Garrus saw the knife in his friend's hand, glinting in the multicolored lights of Afterlife. He tensed again as it arced around toward Shepard, but Shepard had seen it coming too. She dodged under the guy's guard, plucked the knife from his hand as easily as if she was plucking candy from a baby, reversed her grip in an instant, and in an extension of the same movement, used the weight of the knife's hilt in her hand like a bludgeon for an absolutely brutal stroke on her attacker's temple.

 _Spirits, she's beautiful._

The first guy was up again, clutching his ribs, gasping in pain. He launched back at Shepard, tackling her. He hit, sure enough, but in half a second, she had escaped his hold and thrown him. She kicked him, hard, under the rib cage again. His groan was audible, even under the beat of the club. He didn't move again.

Shepard stood over the thugs, not even breathing hard, knife still held in her hand, and a few more blonde curls floating around her face in the fog from the machines of Afterlife. Garrus laughed again and shook his head. _Last time before I die, maybe. If she'll have me, then yes. Yeah. Definitely._

Shepard looked around her, and Garrus turned his head away, into the shadows away from her, toward a passing waitress. She widened her eyes at him, ready to take an order if he had one. Garrus sighed. "Bottle of _rexxus_. Sirkanius Silver, if you have it," he said, naming a milder social beverage that wouldn't affect him too badly if he had to shoot someone later. "And a glass of water."

"Six credits now, or you can set up a tab," the waitress told him. "I can get one going for you."

"Thanks, but that's not necessary." Garrus fumbled in his gauntlet for his credit chit. Six credits was expensive for a bottle of rexxus. The inflated prices for anything that didn't kill you was hardly the worst thing about Omega, but he still didn't miss them. _The colonies are really the only place anything's really affordable, though, and then you get about a quarter of the inventory._ Garrus sighed and slid the chit over the table to the waitress. She looked him up and down, and he could see _"cheapskate"_ written all over her face. _There goes any service I might have gotten here._ In all honesty, he didn't need it. The waitress swiped his chit through her omni-tool and walked off to get his rexxus.

Down on the ground floor, Shepard had stopped looking around the club, and she was still loose in a way that she wouldn't have been if she had seen him. She was talking to a couple of armed batarians in uniform, gesturing toward the groaning turians on the floor. _Security._ The turians were unceremoniously hauled out by their collars and tossed outside of Afterlife. Shepard had convinced security the two of them were the troublemakers. _Nothing else will happen to them, of course, and they'll rob or kill someone else tonight or tomorrow. But their whining won't be able to disrupt these people's drinking tonight._

Garrus put aside his bitterness. He was all too used to the way Omega worked, and right now the objective was not to make it so the two thugs Shepard had beaten would be unable to hurt anyone else. Morinth had finally made her move.

Watching the two of them down below, Garrus was immediately deeply disturbed. Shepard's whole body seemed to soften as Morinth spoke to her. Everything about her relaxed. But to Garrus, nothing about Morinth seemed to warrant that response. She was wearing a version of Shepard's own trademark smirk—the one Shepard had used to flirt with the partying asari earlier—mimicking it with all the skill of an actress that had perfected her craft over a couple of centuries. That smirk, on Shepard, was mischief and brilliance and danger and cool, wry arrogance, and it was one of Garrus's favorite things in the galaxy. On Morinth, it was cold, not merely cool. And it was flat—a mask devoid of all the life Shepard put into it. But Shepard wasn't seeing that.

She was smiling back at Morinth.

Someone cleared her throat, and Garrus turned to see the asari waitress standing beside him again, holding his bottle of rexxus and looking at him clearly watching the scene going on down below. "Thanks," he said. She slid it over the table toward him, rolling her eyes.

"Whatever. Pervert," she muttered, walking away.

Morinth led Shepard to a table back in the shadows, on the other side of the bar from where they had been standing. Garrus's visor tracked trajectories. _Damn. No clear shot._ Now would be the time to shoot Morinth, he thought. Her guard was down. She was completely focused on Shepard, setting up her own traps now, but Shepard wasn't in huge danger yet. _But shoot now, and getting out could be a challenge_. _Even assuming I could move to a better position without attracting attention at this point._

Still, Garrus considered it for a moment. Samara's plan was for Shepard to leave with Morinth from here and to track her back to her base, but, at Samara's own insistence, Shepard didn't have any of her usual tech on her, so tracking her and Morinth would rely entirely on Samara's skills—or on his. Garrus was pretty confident in those skills . . . _but if we lose them . . ._

Garrus didn't have a clear shot at Morinth from where he was, but he could see Shepard well enough. His visor had tracked the movement of his eye and had targeted her—her heart rate was up. So was her temperature. There were definite physical signs that she was attracted to Samara's daughter, but there were other signs too, that didn't match up. Shepard's face was the mask now. She wore an expression Garrus hadn't ever seen from her before—a hard, confident, cruel demeanor that fit the character she was trying to portray better than the person she actually was. _Strength, directness, and vigor_ , he remembered Samara telling Shepard in the entrance. _Violence._ That was the person Shepard was trying to be now—brutal, energetic. Dangerous, but in a more heated and reckless way than her usual steely, reasoned resolve.

The character worked for her a little better than . . . whatever she had been trying to do with the other asari, but it still felt wrong to watch. _Like a simulation sequence that seems to be a good idea at the time but ends up firing ten kilometers off target—still damn close in outer space, but the enemy's still completely untouched when you shoot_. He could see the cracks: every so often, a flicker of contempt or disgust showed on Shepard's face, magnified at five times in his visor—a curl of her lip, a furrowing of her eyebrows. It never lasted more than a fraction of a second, but it was there. Whatever effect Morinth's abilities might be having on Shepard, she didn't have Shepard completely. What she was saying to Shepard, what Shepard was having to say to her—Shepard didn't like it. It was obvious.

But apparently not to Morinth. Garrus rose and walked along the balcony with his rexxus, acting like he needed to stretch his legs, like he might be thinking of leaving or dancing or hitting on someone he'd noticed in the club, but really moving left to get a better angle on Morinth. Her heart rate and temperature were elevated too. Whatever Shepard was saying to her, it was working. She wasn't seeing the flickers of contempt and disgust that seemed so obvious to Garrus, or else Shepard was successfully projecting them out at _everybody else_ , setting herself and Morinth in a club even more exclusive than Afterlife's VIP area and passing off the reaction she was having to her conversation with Morinth as a contempt for the galaxy in general. _Or, maybe, Morinth just wants to believe the story Shepard's telling her. She wants Shepard, and Shepard's making it easy for her to want her. Why not believe it?_

He didn't like the way she moved. Morinth was as graceful as her mother was, but while Samara's movements had a sense of confidence and serenity about them—absolute and never hurried, Morinth moved like a snake. Her arms slid and slithered when she gestured, languid and subtle and suggestive. They invited Shepard in, and Shepard was falling for it, leaning forward, toward Morinth. _What the hell is this woman?_ Here was exactly what Garrus had heard in Nef's diary entries right in front of him. Nef had never thought about being with a woman, let alone an alien, and she had wanted Morinth anyway. Shepard knew what Morinth was. Even if she hadn't, Samara's daughter's fascination with violence and brutality, her hedonistic lifestyle, probably weren't in line with anything Shepard would find attractive—

 _Though damn, she likes_ you _, and you've killed enough people. Why does she like_ you _again?_

It didn't matter. He knew Shepard, and she didn't like Morinth. _But she wants her anyway._

Garrus's mouth felt dry, despite the rexxus. He drained the rest of the bottle and threw it in a recycling receptacle set into the wall right as Morinth stretched her hand out to Shepard and asked her something. Shepard nodded, and both women rose.

 _Here goes._

"Spacer," someone said as Garrus started to walk down from the balcony. He turned his head to see the turian woman that had propositioned him earlier. Her golden eyeliner glinted in the flashing lights of the club, and her bangles clinked as she gestured at the door. "The asari's staying about two blocks from here," the woman murmured. "Kima District. Comettail Suites off Blueletter Alley. Nice view of the promenade. Couldn't give you an apartment, but . . ." she shrugged, looking meaningfully at Garrus's visor and guns. "I'm guessing you can work with that much."

Garrus stared at the woman, but he couldn't waste time asking her how she'd seen what he was doing or why she wanted to help, in case she was wrong or lying. "Thanks."

"That bitch gives me the creeps," the woman shrugged. "Came in here five weeks ago. Thought she was competition, at first, but her 'clients' aren't good marks. And they don't come back. I've stayed out of her business, but if you and your pretty human friend are in it . . ." she shrugged again, then grinned. "You get good at people watching, in my line of work. Take her down, _Archangel_."

Her eyes darted to the emblem on Garrus's armor. Her voice was heavy with irony—she didn't believe for an instant he was actually Archangel. But she was a regular here. She'd seen what Morinth was up to. And she'd seen him watching Shepard, seen Shepard trying to bait someone, and guessed the two of them were out to help.

"I'll do my best," Garrus said, moving past her, after Shepard and Morinth, sweeping for Samara as he went. Up ahead, he spotted a shadow that might have been her by the exposed pipes near the exit, in the faint, red-orange light that would conceal someone in armor like hers. But as Shepard and Morinth moved forward, the shadow melted back into an alley, moving away from the two of them. _If that is Samara, she's still more worried about alerting Morinth than she is about losing her._

At the exit of Afterlife, Garrus watched the human and the asari leaving, black dress and black jumpsuit, long enough to be sure they were probably headed toward Kima.

 _Because of course they are._

Then he turned right into an alley, climbed up a rickety fire escape, and, drawing his pistol, starting climbing for the roofs of the complexes and developments of Omega.

* * *

 **A/N: Beth Shepard might slap me with an energy drain if she knew the comparison I made in the title of this chapter. Mina Murray is a character in a Victorian novel, and in many interpretations of the text, she is often portrayed as either a damsel in distress or so sexually repressed she's eager to run off with a vampire, and Shepard wouldn't appreciate the comparison of her relationship with Garrus to Mina's with Jonathan either. Garrus, I think, would acknowledge the parallels here, though with a pretty wry dislike for them.**

 **The truth is, for a character in a Victorian novel, Mina Murray Harker fights** _ **hard**_ **against her designated DID role. Dracula influences her but never overcomes her, and she turns what influence he has over her back on him to become a leader on the team seeking his demise. To me, the parallels to a Shepard sent up against an Ardat-Yakshi with psychic influence were striking, especially when Shepard's love interest has to watch what happens to her.**

 **In** _ **Dracula**_ **, Jonathan Harker and one other character actually end up killing the vampire. I don't intend to veer that far outside canon; Samara will still achieve her own mission. But it doesn't make sense for a character like Garrus to just sit still while Shepard goes up against a serial rapist and killer with the power to affect the mind, especially less than a week before Shepard's supposed to lead them through the Omega-4 Relay, as I've written it here. I imagine many other characters personally invested in the wellbeing of other Shepards might pull something similar: Jack, Miranda, and Thane all three, at least. Thane might be a little better at it than Garrus is, even, as you can see that Garrus isn't as subtle as he thinks he is just now, with at least two other characters (albeit ones that would be particularly observant by training) noticing he was watching Morinth and Shepard, and the still-very-obvious Archangel emblem on his armor.**

 **Leave a review if you've got something to say,**

 **LMSharp**


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